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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman. This is The World. Cyber-warfare is a growing concern for many governments. That's because coordinated online attacks against government computer systems are now commonplace. Last spring, the Bush administration launched a $30 billion dollar program to get US cyber defenses in order. NATO has made it a security priority as well. In fact, NATO headquarters now houses a unit that specializes in cyber defense. The BBC's security correspondent, Frank Gardner, reports from Brussels.

FRANK GARDNER: An anti-government protest by ethnic Russians in Estonia's capital two years ago. Nothing remarkable in that, except that the protest soon took on a very sinister dimension. The cyber attacks almost crippled Estonia, a full NATO member with a high dependence on the internet. For NATO, this was a wake-up call. The Atlantic alliance suddenly realized it needed a working cyber defense policy and fast. Soloman O'Neill, from the NATO security office, is the man driving much of that policy.

SOLOMAN O'NEILL: The cyber attack can bring down a complete national service of banking or media. And the other practical threat is lots of espionage, cyber espionage going on.

GARDNER: And who's doing this? Is this a bored teenage hacker in his bedroom, or is this a concerted attempt by another country or an organization to hack into NATO to try and steal something?

O'NEILL: In our assessment, it is state-sponsored groups to target specifically NATO.

GARDNER: When was this?

O'NEILL: There was one two years ago, and yes, there has been one recently. They collect information about you, you know, your friends, your relatives. They send you an email with an attachment which may look like it's coming from your brother or your sister. To design that type of worm or trojan, it takes real expertise.

GARDNER: NATO officials refuse to say who they think is behind these examples of cyber espionage. Even if they were certain they came from say China or Russia, it would be almost impossible to prove. They were, however, prepared to give us a glimpse of how they stopped NATO's secrets being compromised.

CHRIS EVIS: My name is Chris Evis. I'm head of the Incident Management Section. We have a constant stream of attacks, and we have a number of analysts here who are constantly reviewing that information, looking for the more serious threats. Here we have approximately 100 sensors at the moment deployed at something close to 30 different sites across the NATO countries. One of these sensors could be on the east coast of the United States; one could be in London; one could be in Iraq; and a number of them could be in Afghanistan. And all that information is simultaneously feeding back to us at the studio.

GARDNER: Okay. We're now kind of in a room within a room within a room. This is the sort of “inner sanctum.” Chris, what happens in here?

EVIS: This is our actual incident management room, where if we have an actual incident, this is where my staff are based to contain and control that attack or infection.

GARDNER: So these are the cyber firemen ready to shimmy down that greasy pole?

EVIS: Essentially.

GARDNER: One of the things that strikes me here is sitting in this incredibly quiet, hushed, almost windowless room – it's quite a strange occupation for a solider to do, isn't it?

EVIS: Cyber war.

GARDNER: Is this the future of warfare?

EVIS: It's obviously going to be a factor within any future conflict. It has the potential for a major impact depending on exactly what's targeted. So it's a feature of any future conflict that can't be ignored.

WERMAN: NATO's Chris Evis ending that report by the BBC's Frank Gardner. You can trace a development of NATO's cyber defenses at our website. At theworld.org you can find our previous reports on this story. Just look for the “Technology” section on the homepage.

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