You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K.

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. Hello. Welcome back to our special three-part series on NATO's 2025 Cyber Coalition exercise.

I'm Liz Stokes, and in this second episode, we're diving into the day-to-day of cyber defense,

how nations detect threats,

defer attacks, and work together to defend critical networks. In this episode, my brilliant colleague Maria Vermazas will guide you through our journey in Tallinn, Estonia,

sharing the sights, sounds, and human stories that bring this exercise to life.

Together, we'll take you behind the scenes of one of the world's most complex and high-stakes

cyber exercises, meeting the people who make it happen and show you why the human factor

is just as important as the technology in defending against modern cyber threats.

So, let's open our time capsule and step into a day at NATO's cyber range.

Hi, everyone.

Maria Vermazza is here.

And as I'm writing and reading this script, it's late January, 26.

And like a lot of us living in the United States,

I am trying to make sense of fast-moving political turmoil,

primarily comments and actions from the U.S. President that are quickly upending, long-established geopolitical world order, and causing a lot of global worry and outcry about how the United States treats its allies,

along with the future of NATO and the United States' place in it or not.

Now, this is not something I would normally share about the sausage-making of a podcast,

but in this case, the greater context really matters.

Quite simply, because the event you're about to hear about

was recorded just before all of this upheaval really began,

and all of that upheaval will undoubtedly influence how we and you interpret what we're about to share here.

...