The NATO has officially declared cyberspace a warfare domain and confirmed that a cyberattack on any of its allies will be considered as an act of war.

NATO officially recognizes the cyberspace as the fifth domain of a warfare so it could respond with conventional weapons in case of a powerful cyber attack.

A cyberattack on one of the NATO member states would activate Article 5 and call for a response of the alliance.

The concept was exposed by the NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg to the media.

“A severe cyber-attack may be classified as a case for the alliance. Then NATO can and must react,” Stoltenberg said in an interview to the Bild newspaper“How, that will depend on the severity of the attack,” 

Stoltenberg explained that the NATO intends to respond to any assault against its members, including a cyber attack that could be considered as an act of war.

All the NATO countries will support each other for the cyber defense of their infrastructure, said Stoltenberg.

“[This] means that we will coordinate and organize our efforts to protect against cyber-attacks in a better and more efficient way. This is about developing our capabilities and ability to partly protect NATO cyber networks but also to help and assist nations in defending their cyber networks.” said Stoltenberg.

“Since it’s very hard to imagine a military conflict today without a cyber dimension, this is important, related to almost all possible conflicts we can foresee in the future,”