North Macedonia strengthens its cyber defences
Cyber defence experts in North Macedonia have been training to improve the capacity of their country to respond to cyber threats. Participants from seven government institutions recently completed two courses set up in the framework of NATO’s Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme. The training provided essential insights to facilitate informed decision-making and better communications across fields of expertise, as well as background information useful to understand and adapt to the evolving cyber threat landscape.
Adapting to the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SPS Advanced Training Courses in ‘Network Security’ and ‘Network Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Mitigation’ were delivered via remote learning platforms by the NATO School Oberammergau, Germany, and the Naval Postgraduate School, United States, between January and August 2020. Thirty civilian and military trainees successfully completed these two courses. “I never expected to learn so much from an online course,” stated one of the course participants.
Trainees included both managers and technicians, who will be able to apply their knowledge to better understand potential vulnerabilities of networked systems, as well as mitigation. “The competencies provided by these courses will strengthen and enhance the cyber defences of national infrastructures and networks in North Macedonia,” stated Dr Deniz Beten, Senior SPS and Partnership Cooperation Advisor at NATO Headquarters. In the cyber defence field, the next steps for NATO’s latest Ally include defining its future cyber defence cooperation with NATO.
Looking ahead, two new cyber defence Advanced Training Courses will be delivered via distance learning to NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) partners starting in September 2020, and more courses involving other partners are planned for 2021.