Cyber Security Strategies of the Visegrád Group States and Romania

Among security challenges that have emerged on nation-state level, attacks in cyber space are ‘products’ of the recent past. Their significance has been overvalued especially in 2007 owing to the cyber attack against Estonia. As a consequence, it were not only the European Union (EU) and the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to have created their own cyber security strategies but the majority of states have also made preparations for preventing and deterring threats from the cyber space. States of the Visegrád Four (V4) and Romania, though all full members of both the EU and the NATO, have prepared their own cyber security strategies.

The objective of this study is to offer a comparative analysis of cyber security strategies of the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, contrasting them to the relevant documents of the EU and the NATO, pointing out the identities and differences. A further essential element of the research is the description of the cooperation between V4 members in the implementation of cyber security strategies and of the chances of broader regional cooperation in the given field based on the jointly adopted documents or on other grounds. One important step in this area was the adoption of the Central European Cyber Security Platform in 2013. This common move, joined also by Austria, is directed mainly at technical exercises. However, the functioning of the Platform is not free from difficulties. Therefore, V4 members have undertaken to find common solutions, including education and professional training for the further development of regional cooperation and widening its spectrum.