On Tuesday, NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is launching Locked Shields 2019, a massive four-day defense exercise held in Estonia in which over 1,000 cybersecurity experts will be defending a fictional country from highly disruptive cyberattacks on critical infrastructure while elections are taking place.
In addition to NATO’s cyber forces, the event will also include cybersecurity experts from the United States European Command as well as from the governments of Estonia, Finland and South Korea.
The cyber threat to national elections is growing. For instance, a new report by the Canadian government shows that the number of elections targeted by cyberattacks has “more than tripled” between 2015 and 2018 among member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes many NATO members.
Read more: NATO launches cyber-defense drill simulating elections under attack
