Category Archives: Education

Guardtime to design new NATO Cyber Range platform

Guardtime announced today that they have been awarded a contract by the Estonian Ministry of Defence under the auspices of NATO to design the next generation NATO cyber range. The new range design will considerably enhance NATO’s cyber, electronic warfare and intelligence, test, rehearsal, and mission refinement capabilities and promote effective cooperation and collaboration of state of the art tools, techniques, and procedures (TTP) to provide NATO range users with a credible capability and options for blue and red team planning activities.

Martin Ruubel, President of Guardtime Estonia said: “When designing and building the defence focused exercise ranges, Guardtime always aims at the principle: “We train as we fight”. For NATO we will provide a state of the art flexible, operationally relevant and representative environment design that enables integrated simulation and training and collaboration for a wide variety of blue and red team cyber mission exercise areas, enabling NATO cyber range users the ability to securely collaborate and refine their tools and tactics.”

It is interesting that Guardtime, the company providing blockchain-based log integrity solutions, has ambition to design new NATO Cyber Range platform. Seems that Guardtime’s plans to become general-purpose cyber security service provider.

Links:
https://guardtime.com/blog/guardtime-awarded-contract-for-nato-cyber-range
http://bravenewcoin.com/news/blockchain-developers-guardtime-to-design-next-generation-nato-cyber-range-capability/

Poltsamaa Gymnasium to offer cyber defence classes on its curriculum

Poltsamaa_Gymnasium_cyber_defence_classes

At the Poltsamaa Gymnasium school in central Estonia, 17 boys and one girl signed up to study cyber defence and IT safety basics as well as cryptology, mechatronics and 3D modelling. One educator says the courses are an investment in the students’ futures’.

Tiia Mikson, Deputy Headteacher of Poltsamaa Gymnasium: “It is known that Estonia is an ‘e-country’ and there are lots of electronic systems that are in everyday use, but also used by the government and in school. People who can manage, protect and deal with them are needed.”

Artam Kivisild, cyber defence class student: “It is very important right now and it will continue to grow more important. Because society is increasingly based on technology and the Internet.”

In class the students learn drone construction, how to use a 3D printer and internet security basics – all meant to educate a generation more aware of cyber risks in a world ever-more dependent on technology. The education programme was introduced in cooperation with NATO and the Estonian government. After graduating from the class, students receive a certificate from the country’s paramilitary organisation, Defence League. That document is meant to help them in applying for university studies in cyber defence.

Links:
http://uatoday.tv/politics/estonia-549267.html
http://opleht.ee/26512-poltsamaa-uhis%C2%ADgumnaasium-hakkab-kuberkaitset-opetama/

Evaluation of Research in ICT in Estonia 2009–2014: Evaluation Report 5/2015

ETAG_logo
Tallinn University of Technology:

4.4.15. Research Group: Faculty of Information Technology: Cyber Security
The group is led by Prof. Olaf Maennel. It is a very young and active group, started around 2013. The main interests of the group are in intrusion detection, testing security policies, and security simulation exercises. They have gained a European FP7 project on E-Crime. The group is still establishing itself in research and its activities are promising. The number and quality of publications is still limited and should be increased. This can be done since the leader of the group is well cited. Assessment: The panel judges the research to be of high international level. The overall evaluation of the group is good.

University of Tartu:

4.6.10. Research Group: Institute of Computer Science: Cryptography and Theoretical Computer Science
This group represents a number of subunits, with 6 topics led by 5 lead PIs (Sven Laur, Helger Lipmaa, Vitaly Skachek, Dirk Oliver Theis, Dominique Unruh). The group was restructured in 2011 with the recruitment of Unruh and Lipmaa. The group addresses six key research topics, namely classical cryptography, quantum cryptography, coding theory, combinatorics and algorithms, security, and verification of cryptography. All topics are related to computer security.
The research highlights include quantum proofs of knowledge, privacy-preserving data-mining, efficient non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs, communication complexity and the rank of matrices, and permutation codes. The group claims 8 level 1.1 publications, which seems a bit low. However, it is also a bit misleading since their list of 30 best papers includes 11 articles in top or at least internationally well recognized journals (J Cryptology, European J Combinatorics, IEEE Tr Information Theory, IEEE J selected areas in communication, Theoretical Computer Science, Journal of Computer Security, Bioinformatics, European J. Operations Research), besides 7 papers in the very best conferences (FOCS, Crypto, Eurocrypt, ICALP). Remaining top 30 items are papers in more specialized cryptography and security venues like ACM CCS, PKC, SCN, CSF, Eurocomb. Publication rate of top level papers has increased significantly over the evaluation period.
Many of the students (10+) are working in related industrial SMEs such as Cybernetica. They are contributing to several practical applications such as e-voting. The group is recommended to keep its current high quality and volume of output, and to develop some additional internationally financed projects. Based on the evidence, panel judges the research to be of high international level. Because of the strong upward trend the overall evaluation of the group is excellent.

Links:
http://www.etag.ee/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Evaluation_raport2015veeb.pdf

Estonian IT College offers “Cyber Security Engineering” curriculum in English

Cyber-Security-Engineering_Estonian-IT-College

Education: professional higher education
Language of instruction: English
Official length of programme: 3 years, 180 ECTS credits
Study form: daily study
Tuition fee: 2400 € per academic year
Start of studies: September 2015
Admission period: 11th of March – 7th of April 2015

Curriculum comprises the following modules:

  • Basic Skills and Competences (16 ECTS)
  • Basics of Information Technology (24 ECTS)
  • IT Systems Development (38 ECTS)
  • IT Systems Administration (22 ECTS)
  • Cyber Security (16 ECTS)
  • Elective subjects (32 ECTS)
  • Internship (27 ECTS)
  • Diploma Thesis (5 ECTS)

Links:
http://www.itcollege.ee/en/admission/