Cyberdefence

Cyberdefence refers to the set of measures, capabilities, and processes used by a state, organization, or alliance to protect information technology assets against cyber threats, to detect incidents, respond to them, and to recover from their effects. It covers national security networks, government information systems, critical infrastructure, and often the networks of private sector partners essential to public safety and the economy. It intersects with cyber security but emphasizes defense, resilience, and strategic preparedness.

Key components include prevention, detection, and response plus recovery and resilience. Prevention involves network hardening, identity and access management, patch management, encryption, and supply chain security. Detection relies on monitoring, anomaly detection, and threat intelligence. Response and recovery encompass incident response planning, forensics, crisis management, business continuity, and public communication. Resilience aims to minimize disruption and ensure rapid restoration of services and redundancy.

Governance involves policy, legal frameworks, international cooperation, information sharing, and the establishment of national cyber commands or security agencies, CERTs or CSIRTs, and public‑private partnerships. Internationally, norms and confidence‑building measures guide state behavior, and cross‑border incident response is coordinated through treaties and multilateral or regional organizations.

Threats include cyber espionage, sabotage, disruption of critical infrastructure, ransomware, supply‑chain attacks, and disinformation campaigns. Defense strategies combine deterrence, capacity building, risk management, incident readiness, and ongoing research and development. Frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO/IEC 27001, and sector‑specific standards are used to structure programs. Cyberdefence is dynamic and requires continuous assessment of threats, investment in people and technology, and cooperation among government, industry, and citizens to reduce risk and maintain trust in digital systems.