[Originally published by Royal Danish Defence College]

In 2016, the former Estonian President Toomas Ilves exclaimed, “The biggest problem in cyber remains deterrence. We have been talking about the need to deal with it within NATO for years now.”

Turning the calendar to 2018, not much has changed. Strategies to deter nation states from hacking and spreading malware have not prevented the hacking of the US Democratic National Committee, the NotPetya attack and numerous other incidents.

In February 2018, US Cyber Command unveiled a new strategy for achieving and maintaining cyberspace superiority. A strategy in which the US commits itself to “increase resilience, defend forward, and persistently contest malicious cyberspace activities.”

What “persistently contest” entails is an open question, but as remarked at the US Cyber Command symposium, “It might get worse, before it gets better.”

In this conference, speakers will discuss:

• the promise and limited success of deterring adversarial action in cyberspace,
• the importance and challenge of resilience in defending against malicious cyberspace activities and
• the escalatory or stabilising potential of the new US strategy for achieving and maintaining cyberspace superiority.

Language: The conference will be conducted in English.

Registration: To register for this conference go to Trippus (click here).

Deadline for registering is 05 APR 2018. Maximum number of attendants is 120. The conference is free of charge.

When: 10 April 2018, 16:30-18:30

Where: Building 118, Auditorium, Svanemøllen Barracks, Ryvangs Allé 1, 2100 Copenhagen

Program

16:00-16:30 Arrival and registration. Coffee in the foyer

16:30-16:35 “Introduction”
M.Sc. / Lt. Cdr Henrik Palbo, Institute for Military Operations, Royal Danish Defence College

16:35-16:55 “Deterring the Cyber Adversary: Punishment, Denial and Entanglement”
Associate professor Jan Martin Lemnitzer, Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark

16:55-17:15 “Cyber Resilience as Contribution to Deterrence”
M.Sc. / Major Mikkel Storm Jensen, Institute for Strategy, Royal Danish Defence College

17:15-17:45 “Seizing the Initiative in Cyberspace: Towards a New Strategy?”
Ph.D. Max Smeets, Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation

17:45-18:30 Q&A session
Moderated by Ph.D. student Jeppe Teglskov Jacobsen, Danish Institute for International Studies