The consequences of cyber attacks.

• Author: Hendrik, Toomas
• Position: Toomas Hendrik Ilves - Interview

The small Eastern European country of Estonia is widely considered a leader in cybersecurity and e-governance and is also commonly believed to be the first victim of cyber war in 2007. The Journal of International Affairs talked to Toomas Hendrik lives, who recently stepped down as president of Estonia after ten years in office, about cyber threats and opportunities. President lives says the more digitized a country is, the more vulnerable it is to cyber attacks, but he believes it is possible to build a credible cyber deterrent.

Estonia is a leader in information technologies, but also a target of cyber warfare. Has the former influenced the latter?

Estonia is known for its good Internet services and high percentage of people using them. Almost all of bank transactions and income tax returns have been done online since 2000, virtually all prescriptions are online, the land registry exists only digitally, and one third of votes in the last several elections were cast online. The highly popular digital signature, given with either an ID card or mobile ID, is legally equivalent to a traditional signature. According to the digital economy and society index, Estonia ranks number one among 28 European countries in e-governance.

This, however, also means that the country is highly dependent on the functioning of these digital services and that cybersecurity is a crucial part of our overall security. We worry first and foremost about civilian and commercial networks. We worry about power grids, traffic control systems, hospitals, banks, financial markets, credit cards, and personal data records. All of these have come under attack; serious or large-scale damage to these in the digital age can have disastrous consequences for our populations and our economies.

Given the robustness of a universal two-factor, highly encrypted ID and the security of a distributed data exchange layer connecting parties, the Estonian system is considered far more secure and less hackable than systems elsewhere.

Nonetheless, in today's world the more modern and the more digitized you are, the more vulnerable you are. Thus, high dependence on digital services and networked infrastructure makes Estonians more vulnerable than other countries that do not use Internet services in everyday business. At the same time, we are more secure than the majority of countries that use less robust security measures.

Estonia is a small country, but over the years it has built a strong...