Merle Maigre to Become Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence
As of 1 September 2017 Merle Maigre, currently the Security Policy Adviser to the President of Estonia, will assume the role of Director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence based in Tallinn.
Sven Sakkov, who has been the Director of NATO CCD COE since 2015, was recently appointed as the new Director of International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) also as of September this year.
Merle Maigre has been the Security Policy Adviser to the President of Estonia since 2012. In this capacity she has been the President’s chief advisor on domestic and international security issues, including also the developments and challenges of cyber defence.
Prior to that she served as the Policy Adviser in the Policy Planning Unit in the Private Office of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Brussels. Maigre has also worked as a researcher at ICDS, where she focused primarily on Ukraine policy and development, including the security situation in Crimea. She has also served as the Deputy Head of the NATO Liaison Office in Kyiv and at the NATO Department in Estonia’s Ministry of Defence to support the country’s NATO accession.
Merle Maigre is a graduate of King’s College London (M.A.), Middlebury College (B.A.), and Tartu University (B.A); she has also studied at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Bologna Center and the Paris Institute of Political Studies or Sciences-Po.
NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence is a Tallinn-based knowledge hub, research institution, and training and exercise centre. The international military organisation is a community of currently 20 nations providing a 360-degree look at cyber defence, with expertise in the areas of technology, strategy, operations and law.
NATO CCD COE is home of the Tallinn Manual 2.0 on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Operations. The Centre also organises the world’s largest and most complex international technical live-fire cyber defence exercise Locked Shields. The Centre also organises the International Conference on Cyber Conflict, CyCon, a unique event joining key experts and decision-makers of the global cyber defence community in Tallinn.
The Centre is staffed and financed by its sponsoring nations and contributing participants. Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States are signed on as Sponsoring Nations of NATO CCD COE. Austria, Finland and Sweden have become Contributing Participants, a status eligible for non-NATO nations.
Photo included: Merle Maigre at CyCon 2017 (photo credits to Estonian Defence Forces)