An interesting article by Maggie Miller of Politico caught my attention this week called “How Estonia is helping Ukraine take on Russian cyber threats.” Why Estonia? As one of the Baltic nations, Estonia is renowned for its country’s ability to identify Russian propaganda and make it known to its people.
In fact, one of the more popular TV shows on Sunday night is one that highlights what Russia is up to this week. The western world could learn a lot from this tiny country about stiff arming Russian disinformation. Here in the US, we have pseudo-news folks parroting Russian propaganda to defeat or downplay successes that would be harmful to the message of their political party. That is not news, if you are keeping score.
Here are a few paragraphs, with the full article accessible below.
“TALLINN, Estonia — Ukraine has surprised the world with its ability to fend off major cyberattacks from Russia. And one small country — Estonia — has played an outsized role in helping them do so.
The nation of just over 1 million, which has fought off cyberattacks inside its borders from Russia for years, is now leading many of the efforts to provide cyber threat intelligence, funding and critical international connections to protect Ukraine from Russian hackers.
In interviews in Tallinn, Estonian officials provided fresh details about how they aid cybersecurity workers in a besieged Ukraine and coordinate with more powerful allies in Europe and the U.S. in the global effort to defend against Russia’s digital attacks.
It’s a partnership that illustrates a unique aspect of modern cyber warfare — some of themost sustained efforts to protect networks are coming from smaller or less-resourced countries that have been the repeated victims of attacks and have learned the hard way about the need to invest in cyber armies.”
It is great to see countries, even smaller ones, lend their expertise to help push back aggressors like Vladimir Putin and Russian armies. In an even more telling example, some Russians are feeling a little more impunity to push back with their concerns within Russia. This would have been unheard of a few years ago.