VŠE Student Anna J. Beck Presents at NATO’s Premier Cyber Conflict Conference

Anna J. Beck, a first-year Master’s student at the Department of International and Diplomatic Studies (Faculty of International Relations, Prague University of Economics and Business), has achieved a remarkable milestone by presenting her research at CyCon 2026 — the 18th International Conference on Cyber Conflict organised by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) in Tallinn, Estonia. Her article, Protecting Humanitarian Organizations in Cyberspace, examines the gaps in international humanitarian law that leave organizations such as the ICRC legally exposed to cyber threats during armed conflict. The piece grew from her undergraduate thesis, supervised by Dr Jan Martin Rolenc, and was developed independently into a conference paper in collaboration with Dr Aleksi Kajander (NATO CCD COE), who served as a consultant on the project.

On 27 May 2026, Anna took part in a panel discussion alongside Dr Anke Allenhöfer, a legal expert in the defence industry, and Dr Joseph Hatfield of the U.S. Naval Academy, with the panel moderated by Dr Kubo Mačák of the University of Exeter — one of the leading authorities in the field of cyber operations and IHL.

We congratulate Anna on this exceptional achievement, which also brought a memorable moment on the sidelines of the conference: as part of the Czech delegation, she had the opportunity to meet President Petr Pavel. Her success reflects both the quality of education conducted at our department and the real-world relevance of international law and security studies in the digital age.