Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said the alliance is coming under an increasing number of state-sponsored cyber attacks as he called on the bloc to boost its online defence capabilities. "According to our latest evaluations, there was a monthly average of 500 threatening cyber attacks last year against Nato infrastructure that required intensive intervention from our experts," he told Die Welt daily.
"That's an increase of 60 percent compared to 2015. Most of these attacks did not stem from private individuals but were sponsored by national institutions of other countries," he added.
Voicing deep concerns about the development, Stoltenberg said cyber defence will play a key role at the next Nato summit. "We must boost our capabilities in this area," he said, warning that attackers can "damage the defence readiness of Nato and hinder the work of our armed troops."
"All military activities are now based today on data transmission. If that fails to work, it can cause serious damage," he said. Several Western nations including Britain, France and Germany have warned of a rise in cyber attacks, and are boosting their defence infrastructure to cope with the new front.
While Stoltenberg did not name the states responsible for the attacks against Nato, Germany has on several occasions fingered Russia as a culprit - accusations that Moscow denies. Separately, Germany's domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maassen told foreign journalists that the country faces possible cyber attacks from Russia in the lead-up to September elections.