WIREDGOV

On May 18 in Brussels Latvian, Austrian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Dutch and Finnish Ministers for Defence with the heads of the European External Action Service, the European Defence Agency, and the EU Military Committee has signed a pledge to mitigate human-related risks in cyber space by launching the Cyber Hygiene initiative.

By joining the pledge, the signatory Member States or EU institutions will promise to take action by the end of 2016. Firstly, they declare to adopt internal guidelines for comprising the best behavioural principles for cyber hygiene when working with computers and the Internet. Secondly, signatories promise to implement the guidelines in practice by introducing, for example, a mandatory e-learning platform. It should be noted that in the future other Member States will be able to accede to this pledge.

Although cyber threats are highly technical by nature, human behaviour related risk is a cause of up to 97% of security incidents. Nevertheless, a human activity is most often only a consequence of a poor understanding of the risks and threats in cyberspace, therefore it is essential to take an action to ensure that employees and staff of particular organisation receive a proper education on risks and threats existing in cyberspace.

This initiative is part of a wider project, which aims to train the employees and officials of national defence ministries and other institutions involved in the project activities on safe behaviour in a virtual environment. Project proposal idea is owned by the Estonian Ministry of Defence, but the Latvian Ministry of Defence was kindly invited to implement the initiative and to use the Latvian Presidency of the Council of the EU as a platform to advertise the education on cyber risks and threats on the EU level.

Contact

ANETE GNĒZE

Senior Desk Officer of the Media Relations Section of the Military Public Affairs Department of the Ministry of Defence
+371 67335093
+371 26474087
anete.gneze@mod.gov.lv