NATO wants to be well prepared when facing cyber-terrorists, so the alliance has established a think tank called the Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia. Let’s just call it NATO Cyberbrain.

I paid a visit to Alliance’s Cyberbrain and were somewhat surprised  – instead of a bunch of computer freaks sitting behind screens and being clinged into cyberspace I only saw men wearing suits and ties. They explained me it’s a think tank, receiving the “raw data” from national CERTs (computer emergency response teams).

Another funny thing is that they follow the rules created by themselves. They are neither accounted to NATO nor US or Estonian Defence Ministry’s. Only to their own steering comitee.

So, for example, if this  commitee would decide to establish close cooperation with Kaspersky, that people say have connections with Russian administration, they’d do it. Although Kremlin is believed to have fuelled or at least approved  well-known cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.

Read more about 2007 cyber attacks against Estonia from here and beware – it could happen in your country too.

I had an interesting video-recorded conversation with Kenneth Geers, scientist working for NATO Cyberbrain. Look at the video below (but sorry for the old-fashioned video style). 

Geers explained me the work that’s done in the center, that he claims to be unique in the world. He also gave some ideas about who are cyber criminals, how they think and how they’d want to control not only our bank accounts, but also strategic weapons.

Latest global report on cyber crime, published in Estonian media showed some worrying trends:

- Cyber criminals enjoy practical impunity in countries such as Russia and China.

- The strategical planning of cyber criminals become more and more sophisticated, but the Governments remain slumber and ignorant on dealing with the issue.

- One of the greatest challenges for dealing with the issue of cyber crime is absence of relevant international law. The law regulating e-commerce is especially insufficient.

- Collecting the digital evidence and managing it in courts is unfortunately also inept.

- The number of so-called spamming zombie-computers has quadrupled during last quarter. They are able to send 100 billion spam messages daily.

- E-criminals are among the winners of global economic recession.

- There are already more than 7500 websites in the Internet directly under the control of terrorists.

- Cyber criminals will very soon be capable of destroying country’s electrical, water and gas supplies and internet banking systems.

Here’s a post I wrote about how Estonia is “arming” its nation against cyber criminals.