Estonia: Business By Day and Cyber By Night

In Estonia all roads lead to cyber defense, as the country offers ample attack opportunities after its leap into digitization in the 1990s.

The small NATO ally endures Russia’s cyber wrath since its government first adopted digital offensives.

The first generation of attacks where distributed denial of service (DDoS), by which an internet server is overwhelmed with internet traffic.

This relatively crude harassment from Russia has evolved since the first incident.

“If we discuss what kind of attacks we had in 2007, then these are not comparable to attacks that we are witnessing right now,” said Mihkel Tikk, deputy commander of cyber command in the Estonian Defense Forces.

Tikk explained that Russian aggression generally follows high profile news that irritates Moscow.

While DDoS attacks have increased in scale, Tikk’s concerns are shared with other threats.

AI-powered attackers as well as phishing and more sophisticated intrusions are also on the agenda for Tikk, as well as military infrastructure.

The more sophisticated maneuvers, employing highly skilled offensive operators to find a critical and unknown vulnerability in a system, is called a zero day.

“We have seen an increase in 2023 of zero days,” Tikk told SIGNAL Media in an interview in Tallinn, Estonia, on Wednesday.

Given Russia’s persistent threat, preparation becomes integral. The country conscripts thousands every year, and they normally serve for less than a year and remain in the reserves.

Entering a cyber warfare unit follows a competitive process, not many can achieve it and fewer are selected to stay beyond their military service period, Tikk explained.

“Up to 10% of them remain in our system, we actually take best of the best,” Tikk said.

Still, cyber reservists face constant demands given the country’s challenges.

“When, unfortunately, something happens, then we have to grow many times over, we have to become much bigger,” Tikk said.

Countering persistent aggression means that reservists are called in to perform a specific duty during a crisis, interrupting their daily civilian responsibilities, and later resuming their activities once the country has stemmed an attack.

Cyber unit service is not limited to environments where computers can be adequately operated. Estonia’s operators work beyond the convenience of a base.

“One kind of strength that we have here in Estonia is that when a conscript, or a new colleague joins us, then we build our own laptop, in some cases software, we maintain it, we break it, we hold it under a lot of stress,” Tikk said. Cyber training includes operating proficiently in areas that will potentially be the edge, in forests and bogs.

Estonians need to double in a defense role as their country is too small to have a large permanent defense force but has a giant to the east willing to put its citizens in harm’s way to satisfy its expansionist dreams.