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President Ilves opens international cyber security conference in Tallinn

08.06.2011

Mutual co-operation between countries as well as close co-operation between the state and private sector will help us defy cyber threats successfully, told the President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, when opening the representative international cyber defence conference convened in Tallinn by NATO Centre of Excellence for Co-operative Cyber Defence.

The Estonian Head of State reminded those present that while only a couple of years ago, even some NATO countries treated cyber defence as irrelevant, the attitude has now changed. This is also confirmed by NATO’s new strategic concept, which pays great emphasis on cyber security and was adopted at NATO’s Lisbon Summit.

Cyber attacks have become a military threat, a device of political pressure and a form of theft of intellectual property or cyber piracy, President Ilves said. Like many NATO allies have already understood: intellectual property represents the wealth of our states, involving years of work and hundreds of millions in money, such as in the case of Skype.

President Ilves emphasised the need to turn the co-operation between the public and private sector into the norm, instead of an exception, as such co-operation – based on citizens’ society – is vital in ensuring the cyber security of each country. In this regard, President Ilves suggested the Cyber Defence League, operating in Estonia, as an example – information technology specialists working in private companies spend their free time building up the cyber security of the state.

Read more:

"How Estonian become pioneering cyberdefenders", The Christian Science Monitor

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