DÉFENSE ZONE
In early December NATO concluded the 2025 edition of Cyber Coalition, one of the largest cyber defence exercises in the world. Held from 28 November to 4 December, it brought together from Tallinn more than 1,300 specialists (200 of them on site) from 29 allied countries and several partner nations, mobilised to test their ability to respond collectively to complex digital attacks.
The exercise staged a series of realistic scenarios: compromise of critical infrastructure, an incident affecting space systems, infiltration of command networks, and malicious actions in backup systems. The aim was to assess the teams’ responsiveness, their inter-allied coordination and the effectiveness of their mutual support mechanisms in the event of a cyber crisis.
At the heart of the set-up, Allied Command Transformation (ACT) led several experiments, including a virtual support platform for rapidly mobilising experts between nations in the event of a major intrusion. This work reflects NATO’s determination to anticipate the rapid evolution of threats and to strengthen its defensive posture against increasingly well-organised adversaries.
Cyber Coalition also illustrates the growing importance of international cooperation in a field where no nation can act alone. As geopolitical tensions now extend into cyberspace, the Alliance is seeking to consolidate a collective, credible and adaptable response in order to protect its networks, its operations and its populations.
Read our full report on this international exercise in the print version of our next quarterly magazine (on newsstands in early January).
