Estonia hosts major cyber security conference

TALLINN - Security experts from around the world have gathered in Tallinn for a high-level conference on cyber security that called attention to the need for countries to invest more in protecting their internet space.

The conference, organized by the NATO-accredited Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, saw experts from nearly 40 countries discuss the latest issues in fending off both individual hackers and state-sponsored cyber attacks.

"We need to make our transnational computer-dependent critical infrastructure resilient, that is to say, if not impervious then at least maximally shielded from the dangers of an attack," Estonian President Toomas Hendrick Ilves said in his opening speech at the event.

“We have no conception of how to define aggression in cyberspace or redefine it for cyberspace; we lack clear attribution to any political entity; we lack a response doctrine to apply were we to know who committed the aggression; and we have not dealt with the possibility of asymmetry, i.e., what if an effectively military action was perpetrated in its entirety by a small group of unknown hackers,” he said.

Melissa Hathaway, a former US cyber tsar, also made an appearance to stress the importance of cyber security.

"Cybercrime and cyberespionage are topics that can't be ignored... Key infrastructure, including power stations, have become vulnerable due to their dependence on Internet connections," Hathaway said.