1 Introduction The exponential growth in the use of information and communication technologies from the second half of the 20 th century onwards has significantly influenced development trends in society. Modern information and communication technologies have substantially broadened the possibilities and increased the efficiency of the interaction methods between geographically remote entities from various fields of the society and economy. The growing number of users of information and communication technologies results in an increasing dependency of both the public and the private sectors on these technologies, rendering them more vulnerable. Besides the high dependency of society on information and communication technologies, the beginning of the 21st century was marked by a significant change in the global security environment and an increasing number of asymmetrical threats with a higher degree of sophistication and impact effects. A wide scope of potential methods of abuse and damage to electronic information, communication and control systems as well as of a negative influencing of social and economic processes in the framework of the international cyber environment thus included cyber threats among potentially serious global threats such as international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, etc. Critical control, technological, communication and security systems are endangered by new forms of attacks, and so are those services that would, if failing or malfunctioning, seriously impact the operation of the state (mostly in its main security areas). Dynamically developing modern technologies make it possible for additional new security threats to emerge. The Slovak Republic must be prepared to react to a wide spectre of existing and potential threats. At the same time, it is aware of the fact that threats and attacks emerging in cyber space may escalate up to a level that would require collaboration of the allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (hereinafter referred to as “NATO”) under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty1 that would result in a collective defence and/or coordinated response. Thus, cyber security also needs to be perceived as a subsystem of national security and cyber space as its new operational domain. The Slovak Republic intends to cooperate with all relevant state and private cyber space actors, which respect identical values and do not restrict the freedom and safety of the use of cyber space. This Cyber Security Concept of the Slovak Republic for the years 2015-2020 (hereinafter referred to as the “Concept”) defines the starting position and the goals of the Slovak Republic in the field of cyber security. The Concept is harmonized with the Security Strategy of the Slovak Republic and forms a basic and starting document for the subsequent creation of regulations, standards, methodical instructions, rules, security policies and other instruments necessary to provide for cyber security. 5 1 The North Atlantic Treaty dated 4 April 1949, the so-called Washington Treaty, establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).