NATO CCDCOE’s Executive Cyber Seminar, held in Brussels from 18 to 20 November, brought together more than 30 senior officials from NATO, EU, government, military, private sector, and academia to examine how nations and alliances can prepare for and manage cyber crises through coordinated, cross-sector action.
“With state-backed cyber aggression on the rise, defending digital sovereignty can no longer rely on isolated action. It requires deliberate, coordinated planning across government, military, industry, and volunteer communities to maintain national and allied resilience before, during, and after a crisis. It is no longer about how we used to plan and operate, but about what today’s environment requires,” explains Course Director Major John William Dall.
Across two intensive days, participants worked through a structured series of briefings, expert sessions, and a strategic decision-making exercise. Sessions covered the foundations of cyberspace as an operational domain and a part of Multi Domain Operations, NATO’s evolving cyberspace doctrine, the latest threat intelligence trends, different perspectives for civil-military cooperation, legal perspectives, information manipulation threats, and CCDCOE’s exercise Crossed Swords approaches to integrating public and private actors into military operational and tactical planning.
A component of the programme was STRATEX, the strategic-level decision exercise derived from CCDCOE’s Locked Shields cyber defence exercise. Participants worked in syndicates to address realistic crisis injects that tested national procedures, alliance coordination, and decision-making under pressure.
The seminar also addressed real-world experience from the war in Ukraine, demonstrating how public- and private-sector support, volunteer initiatives, and military cyber planning intersect in modern conflict. These operational insights reinforced a consistent theme: cyber defence is no longer the responsibility of any single institution, but a whole of society approach with a shared imperative, requiring trust, preparedness, and coordination across all sectors.
CCDCOE extends its appreciation to all speakers and contributors whose expertise shaped the seminar’s impact:
- Dr. Michael Fischerkeller, US Institute for Defense Analyses
- Mr. Lars Koreman, Cyber Defence Policy Officer & Program Manager at EU External Action Service
- Mr. Yucel Alver, Cyber SA Analyst, NIC, NATO CyOC
- Ms. Jamila Boutemeur, European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA)
- Mr. Nikolas Ott, Microsoft
- LtCol Sander Soomre, Estonian Cyber Command
- Mr. Martin Paas, Telia Estonia
- Dr. Andrii Davydiuk, UKR representative in NATO CCDCOE
- Mr. Otakar Horak, NATO CCDCOE
- Mrs. Beatriz Marin Garcia, European External Action Service (EEAS)
- LtCol Markus Maybaum, NATO CyOC
- Major John William Dall, NATO CCDCOE
Their contributions were central to making the Executive Cyber Seminar 2025 a comprehensive and high-value event.
The next iteration of the Executive Cyber Seminar will be 14 to 16 of April 2026 in Brussels.