Objectives: this session on Protecting Sensitive Information in the Digital Age is designed to raise awareness of potential vulnerabilities in your operations and recommend essential cyber protection practices. It is presented by experts from the General Directorate of Internal Security.

Cyber attacks are launched daily against the interests of public services, such as hospitals, research laboratories and universities, or a company by specialized units or non-state hacker groups. Since the attacks against the Estonian state in 2007, it is even considered as a new battle space, with its own processes and tactics, alongside other physical spaces (land, sea, air), electromagnetic space and the infosphere. Cybersecurity, cyberintelligence and cyberespionage are thus areas of activity that have become increasingly important for state services as well as for all non-state actors (companies, individuals).
The Internet is the extension of existing power struggles, in another dimension. The use of the telegraph at the beginning of the 20th century gave a technological lead to the British power and favored competitive processes between States. Cyberspace presents a similar dynamic. It is interdependent with physical spaces (the fiber optic submarine cable can be cut, for example), becomes a source of vulnerabilities and follows the same logic of technological race.
In the early 2020s, all the reports from IT protection companies point to the current explosion in the number of cyberattacks and cyberespionage. In May 2020, EasyJet is the victim of a cyberattack while its planes are at a standstill. The data of 9 million customers is hacked including the credit card numbers of 2,200 of them. The activities of university researchers are not spared from this permanent vulnerability. How do you protect yourself from cyber espionage and cyber attacks as a researcher in a university laboratory?

Course Method:
Presentations, demonstrations and experiments

Public: all PhD students

Free admission without reservation