From Nextgov: Estonian experience offers lessons on preparing for a major cyberattack
The wired Baltic nation has become a proving ground for attackers as well as an intellectual center for rethinking cybersecurity , says Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
In the spring of 2007, Estonia became the first nation to face a coordinated, nationwide cyberattack when a series of electronic bombardments struck down media, telecommunications, government and banking websites. Digital traffic from servers as far away as Peru, Vietnam and the United States flooded Estonian websites, drowning them in superfluous data. The attack knocked telephone exchanges offline for more than an hour, jeopardizing emergency services. It knocked out media and government portals, leaving citizens in an information vacuum. Beginning April 29, three waves of attacks during a two week period severely disrupted the ordinary tasks that fuel modern economies -- shopping, pumping gas, withdrawing cash from automatic teller machines. A significant act of cyberterrorism posed an economic and political threat in a way no modern economy had previously experienced.