Cybersecurity

Estonia, US launch effort to ease sharing of cyberthreat intel

Estonian and U.S. specialists are setting up a new project aimed at easing the transfer of cyberthreat information between the two nations.

The five-year effort will attempt to find ways around a conundrum that often prevents even close allies from telling each other about threats in the virtual domain: Doing so exposes one’s own vulnerabilities.

“No nation wants to do this,” said Kusti Salm, the director general of the Estonian Centre for Defence Investment. And while cybersecurity technology as a whole continues to evolve quickly, enabling intelligence sharing without simultaneously creating security risks is relatively unstudied, he said.

"There hasn't been too much progress in this field. It's pretty ambitious stuff," Salm told Defense News.

The Estonian Centre for Defence Investment oversees acquisitions and research for the small Baltic country’s military. Salm said his organization controls about 60 percent of Estonia’s annual defense budget, which currently sits around $660 million.