Readers of this blog are well aware of Estonia’s cybersophistication. Unfortunately, its innovations and leadership in state-of-the-art online voting, tax filing, and money transfer has made the country a target for malicious cyberattacks. Exhibit A: the denial-of-service attacks of April and May 2007, which closed down critical Estonian government and business websites and froze the country’s automated teller machine and mobile phone networks.
Vaino Reinart, Estonia’s ambassador to Canada, Mexico, and the United States (yes, all three; a busy man!), addresses the issue of cyber-security in a thoughtful piece in today’s National Post. He discusses many of the steps Estonia has taken to strengthen its cyber defenses in anticipation of the next attack. What caught our eye was the disclosure that cyber-defense training begins in childhood for all of the country’s citizens (emphasis added):
We have increased IT education in our universities as well as included computer safety classes in primary and secondary school curricula.
Thus the modern face of civil defense. In the old days, pre-Internet, we had duck-and-cover drills; now, children learn to build firewalls.
