Covering the net

ENAR

Good role models are hard to find. Thus insurers on a quest for new business lines would do well to pay close attention to Estonia, the small Baltic republic where cyber security is writ larger than anywhere.  In April, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves highlighted his country’s success in safeguarding Internet freedom and implementing cyber-security measures. In an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune, Ilves explained that  Estonia’s cyber-security achievements came on the tails of a countrywide cyber attack five years earlier that targeted government websites, newspapers and banks and overloaded servers to the point of shutting down the country’s digital infrastructure for days.  While the attacks on Estonia were harsh, they were just part of a rising tide. As consumers, corporations and small businesses have moved onto the net, criminals and online mercenaries have followed. This, in turn, has created a huge need for online actors to protect