The Founders of Cyber Security Associates (CSA), Dave Woodfine and James Griffiths recently joined members of BPE and other key stakeholders from the Gloucestershire cyber community to visit Tallinn in Estonia. The purpose of the visit was to get a better understanding of the Estonian digital journey and to witness the extensive cyber defence measures that have been put in place to protect their citizens, organisations and public services.

Not deterred by the snow and adverse weather delaying flights, the CSA Team joined representatives from Cyber Cheltenham (CyNam), GFirst LEP, Golden Valley, NCSC, Open Data Institute, BPE and the Business and Innovation Magazine over the period 11^th – 14^th December 2022.

On arrival into Tallinn, we received our first introduction to the Estonian digital revolution (e-estonia) and how the introduction of digital services and identities has transformed this post-Soviet society into one of the world’s leading digitally advanced societies.  Now equipped with electronic identification and digital signatures every Estonian citizen has access to medical, dental, banking, voting and all public services through a single portal.  Clearly cyber security is at the heart of the initiative and a central Information System Authority develops and manages the central technological platform and is responsible for the cyber security of the country….yes the country.  For CSA this presented and excellent opportunity for us to share views on the latest cyber threats, how to defend a large infrastructure and discuss how to ensure the cyber safety of the population.

We were also very fortunate to visit the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence (CCDCOE) where we were briefed on this multinational and interdisciplinary cyber defence hub.  Here we realised that the vast amount of open-source resources, thought leadership papers, training materials and general cyber advice and guidance is available for UK companies to use.

For our final day we had the privileged of meeting a number of start-up companies at the Tehnopol Science and Business Park. Here, Tehnopol provides businesses with everything they need for growth, development and test environments. This was a great chance to share our thoughts and views with our cyber colleagues, and more importantly forge working partnerships moving forward.

We finished the day with a dinner reception at the Residence of the British Ambassador to Estonia where we continued our discussions.

Overall, the visit was a great success and for CSA we have realised they are many business opportunities and partnerships to explore in Estonia.