Cybersecurity 2020: What Estonia knows about thwarting Russians

If a modern-day Paul Revere were to gallop through cyberspace yelling, “The Russians are coming!” Jaan Priisalu would be among the first to jump to the rescue.

A taciturn information technology expert who seems to make some of his best decisions in the sauna, Mr. Priisalu is no stranger to battling Russian cyber warriors. When Russian hackers were believed to carry out the world’s first politically motivated cyberattack against a nation in 2007, leaving large parts of Estonian society electronically dark, Mr. Priisalu was in charge of IT risk management at the country’s leading bank. Today, he is a researcher at Tallinn University of Technology. On a dreary November day he is sitting in his office in red polka-dot socks and slippers when the phone rings. It is Andrus Padar, commander of Estonia’s Cyber Defense League, asking if he could join in an exercise this week.

With a shoestring budget of about $300,000 to cover office space and a few staff members, Mr. Padar depends on hundreds of volunteers like Mr. Priisalu who are willing to spend their evenings and weekends bolstering the country’s cyberdefenses. They do everything from giving talks at elementary schools to planning elaborate simulated cybercrises so government officials can refine their response skills.

These volunteers are affectionately dubbed the “nerd reserves,” and come mainly from the vibrant IT community in Estonia, which developed the original software behind Skype. But they also include teachers, lawyers, utility employees – even a man of the cloth. 

“They fight for free, basically, and that’s the beauty of doing it of free will,” says Aivar Sarapik, an Estonian Orthodox priest who has served as chaplain for the unit since its inception. “You protect your lifestyle, you protect your value system, you protect who you are.”