A Spirit of Resilience
Earlier this year, Primafila’s Chris Findlay and Markus Zucker were able to observe the world’s largest and most advanced international defence exercise Locked Shields in Tallinn, Estonia.
Text: Chris Findlay
Photos: Markus Zucker & Chris Findlay
Long Herman, Fat Margaret, and the Devil’s Mother are just a few of Tallinn’s many guardians. The ancient towers that overlook the town walls represent a centuries-old tradition of watchfulness. In every corner of this beautifully preserved old city, once one of the commercial hubs of the Hanseatic League, the vibrant Estonian culture is overlaid with many linguistic, historic, and architectural strata reflecting the past influence of Danes, Germans, Russians, and other nations, whether as traders or raiders, merchants or residents, occupiers or allies.
Sophisticated defenses against diffuse threats
Today, Tallinn also hosts the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE), a multinational and interdisciplinary hub of cyber-defense expertise. In today’s networked societies, in Estonia and elsewhere, cyber-attacks carried out by shadowy actors pose diffuse threats that require more sophisticated defenses than walls and towers.
Earlier this year, Primafila’s Chris Findlay (journalist) and Markus Zucker (photo/film) attended the CCD COE Locked Shields 2017 cyber-defense exercise on behalf of Siemens AG, which contributed a power management system to be targeted by the Red Team. The scenario for this exercise, one of the largest and most complex of its kind, saw the Blue Team’s defenders of “Berylia” pitted against hackers from “Crimsonia” who were trying to shut down the energy supply of a military airbase.
Grid resilience plays key role
“Grid resilience is one of the critical parts of the critical infrastructure,” Sven Sakkov, Director of NATO CCD COE, told us in an exclusive interview. “Everything we do needs electricity, and the assuredness of supply and the resilience of the grid is fundamental in how the modern world operates.”
