International cooperation and training

Cooperation and international commitments

In 2015 defence ministries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Cybersecurity Cooperation.

In 2016, during the NATO Warsaw Summit, member states, including Latvia, declared cyberspace a new operational domain  and  signed the NATO Cyber Defence Pledge to promote resilient cyber defences across the Alliance. NATO Cyber Defence Pledge assessment, which is used in evaluation of member state cyber defence capabilities and identifying of improvements, was reviewed in 2023. Latvia joined NATO’s Virtual Cyber Incident Support Capability (VCISC) in 2023. It is a framework in which member states receive and provide mutual virtual support for mitigation efforts in response to malicious cyber activities.

In 2017 Ministry of Defence and Latvian Information and Communication Technology Association signed cybersecurity cooperation agreement.

In 2021 defence ministries of Latvia and Poland signed an agreement for development of cooperation framework and procedures for cooperation between military information technology incident response teams. 

CERT.LV and its foreign counterparts are also engaged in special cyber threat hunting operations that are designed to strengthen the information and communication technology platforms of government institutions and other critical infrastructure holders and operators. CERT.LV threat hunting operations are implemented together with Canadian, Belgian, US, EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and other partner organisations. 

Training

Latvia has joined several international cyber crisis management training programmes, such as CyberEurope and BlueOlex. CyberEurope is a cyber incident and crisis management training aimed at improving horizontal national and international cooperation in cases of pan-European cyber crises. BlueOlex is an exercise that strives to strengthen cyber crisis coordination and communication between EU member states. Latvia also takes part in Locked Shields, Crossed Swords, a training organised by NATO CCDCOE (NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence), and NATO’s Cyber Coalition training. National level exercise NAMEJS and AMEX also contain cyber crisis management elements, while “Medus Pods” (Honeypot) is training that focuses on specific cyber crisis management dimensions.