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EESTI ELU reedel, 17. juunil 2022 — Friday, June 17, 2022
Why technical expertise isn’t always required to work in cybersecurity Natalie Jenkins The e-Estonia Briefing Centre hosts the series Digital Discussions, in which experts on digitalization and the cyber realm are invited to speak on relevant topics. On June 2nd, international cyber security heavyweights ga thered for a discussion on an increasingly important topic – security in cyberspace. Guests included Ms. Merle Maigre, Senior Cyber Security expert at the e-Governance Academy; Ms. Līga Raita Rozentāle, CISM, Microsoft Senior Director and Team Lead for EU Cybersecurity and Emerging threats; and Mr. Siim Alatalu, CEO of the CR14 foundation. Topics included resilience, cyber warfare, the role of the private sector, and cooperation between international organisa tions, such as NATO and the United Nations. But one recur ring theme was the importance of people – both professionally involved and not – in develop ing a country’s cyber resilience. Cybersecurity is as much people-oriented as it is tech nology-driven, going against the
stereotypical idea that machines and hackers are all that make up the field. Resilience begins with people While building new cyber weapons and security mecha nisms are important for de veloping a country’s resilience, the first line of defence truly lies in the awareness and educa tion of its population. Let’s say a country develops a powerful, all-encompassing firewall that protects its data and critical infrastructure. “Sooner or later, someone will get through,” says Merle Maigre. Security breaches are not a question of if, but when. Cybersecurity is therefore a never-ending game of recon sidering what the worst-case scenario is and being prepared for that. It’s a “constantly moving target,” says Siim Alatalu. Citizens must be aware of how to protect themselves when the inevitable happens. More generally, they must be equipped with the knowledge necessary to maintain good cyber hygiene. Resilience “all starts with people,” says Alatalu. “They need to be aware, have the
Garage talk: Erik Hess’ custom cars in Hamilton Vincent Teetsov They’re sculpted. They’re loud. They’re fast. And they have all left a searing hot mark of a time and place on their drivers’ memories. Hot rods, street rods, rat rods, muscle cars – no matter what variation a driver owns, cus tom classic cars become a subject of devotion for each driver. They first arrive as a mass of disparate parts: a chassis, a body, an engine and its indivi dual components, seats, and more. The driver will put it all together over several years, maybe race with it for a few more, or maybe just put a couple thousand miles on the car before selling it and moving on to a new challenge.
can lead to security incidents, data compromise and data loss. This is especially harmful to those that work in government, as data breaches can lead to financial loss, operational down time, organisational upheaval, damage to the organisation’s reputation, and legal liability. Poor cyber hygiene at an indi vidual level has the potential to adversely affect national se curity.
For Erik Hess, each car he has owned is immortalized in a mural on one wall of his garage in Hamilton. From the red dune buggy he built when he was 16, his very first build, to “OL FLAME”, the yellow 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe that sits on a lift in the garage. Also starring on the mural are a couple of his friends’ and family’s cars, in cluding an old teacher’s 1961 Ford pickup truck. All of these vehicles converge in a scene in front of a charming diner in Magnetawan, in the District of Muskoka. Over the course of an evening, he described not only the role automobiles have played in his life, but their pro gression from the end of the Second World War onward. Every small part of a car can
Erik Hess’ 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe hot rod.
Merle Maigre. Photo: estonianworld.com
training, and exercise this train ing. This is something that Estonia has done at all levels, beginning with young people… Resilience also means knowing procedures, so that even if people are not 100 percent up to date on their training, they are still aware of what to do in certain scenarios. For instance, what the course of action should be if you find a USB stick on the ground or you work in critical infrastructures [and something goes wrong]… You may not be interested in cyber but cyber is interested in you, so it’s important to be pre pared.” Maintaining good cyber hy giene is an individual responsi bility. Poor cyber hygiene habits (such as repeatedly using the same password, clicking on phishing scams, positive sen sitive information online, etc.)
enhance or inhibit its perfor mance, and with Erik Hess, you are given an education on all of these fine details. Hess is a retired landscape architect, so one is left to wonder how this hobby came to be. Perhaps it’s the contrasting scale of these two sets of skills that makes building and fixing cars so appealing. Either way, he’s made the perfect space for it. After bull dozing the former garage, he built a bigger garage and work shop by himself, with more room to get around vehicles. From the garage to the drive way, he stores two cars that span across two eras. The first is the aforementioned 1940 Ford, a classic hot rod with a flame paint job, for which Hess bought the steel body in Florida in 1998. Delving into the history of this era, he describes how, “When the Second World War ended, all these GIs came home, and there were a ton of old Ford cars. 275,032 Fords were made and 185,000 of them had the Flathead V-8 in them.” The engines produced a reason able amount of power and the lightweight cars were cheap and pretty fast. From here, dirt tracks sprung up all over North America, and races started almost immediately. The flathead engines of this era are unique because they have valves next to the cylin ders, as opposed to valves being above the cylinders in overhead valve engines. These were the first real modern V-8 engines
So, what does it mean to be educated in cybersecurity? How can you, as a citizen, maintain good cyber hygiene? Maigre says that at an individual level, you should continuously “up date your passwords, software systems, have security backup systems, and use multifactor authentication.” At the professional level, building cyber resilience also goes back to people. “There is always a human factor at the heart of technology,” says Maigre. Building on this idea, Rozentāle says that govern ments, civil society, industries, and international organisations alike require “the right people with the right skills to address new challenges that are con stantly changing. Those people have to come up with new and innovative ideas. [In this regard, I’m reminded of] Estonia’s data embassy that locates Estonian data outside of the country’s borders. That was a creative solution at the time.”
produced in large quantities, capable of being manufactured with just one simple casting. Moreover, Hess’ hot rod has an Offenhauser Cross Ram intake manifold, part of an experi ment to get more horse power back in the day. In the end, more horsepower could have been achieved, but aestheti cally, what you see poking out of the hood is just too cool to change. The car uses the same engine block Ford used to beat Ferrari at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race. It sits on an old chassis and weighs about 3000 pounds, which is almost equally distributed between the front and rear axles. This is because Hess cut the firewall back and moved the motor and the seats back. After lots of sweat and frustration, it was finally ready to hit the road in 2003. All in all, it’s such a rare setup that Ford engine builders were compelled to approach Hess when his car was at the Performance World Custom Car and Truck Show in Toronto, saying that they had never seen anything like it. Through Hess’ description of the people and history behind these automobiles, one is re minded of how cars of the era, and technical specs like those mentioned above, were embed ded into the culture of the time. Take, for example, the “little deuce coupe” that drag racer John Milner drove in the film American Graffiti. The same car was also described in detail by The Beach Boys in 1963. Then
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The “right” people working in cybersecurity When asked if there were enough cybersecurity profes sionals available in the market, the panellists unanimously agreed that there weren’t. Perhaps this is because of the commonly shared idea that working in cybersecurity re quires a technical, STEM-based background. But this is not always the case. “When speaking of educa tion, yes, it’s important to pro mote the study of STEM, but what we also need in cyberse curity are people that are good in other fields, like sociology, philosophy, and law,” said Maigre. It takes one to know one. To design sufficient cyber defence mechanisms, policies, or legis lation, it’s important to under stand how an adversary would behave. Areas of discipline that study human behaviour – such as the ones that Maigre de scribed – are valuable towards these ends. Far from being an area that focuses solely on the technical, cybersecurity encompasses many stakeholders, fields, and areas of life. To develop cyber resilience at both the individual and national levels, it is crucial to understand that cybersecurity is just as people-oriented as it is driven by technology. Solutions in the cyber realm must reflect this nuanced reality.
there’s the song “The Little Old Lady (from Pasadena),” by the duo Jan and Dean. The song describes her “super stock Dodge” with a “four speed stick and a four-two-six,” referring to her car’s gear shifter and beefy Chrysler 426 Hemi engine. Hess reminisced about the life around classic cars: from songs to drive-in diners. He says, “This was still part of the music, part of the songs, part of the culture, where we would just hop in the car and go cruising as teenagers.” Further back on the driveway is the Shelby Cobra 427 that he built for his wife – the licence plate reads “LIA H.” This car leaves behind the hot rod era and moves into the muscle car era of the 60s. Before, there was an unwritten rule that big body cars must have big en gines and small body cars must have small engines. With the big engine and small body of the ‘64 Pontiac GTO, however, the rules were broken. And so, the muscle car era began. Genuine Cobra bodies were made in England and then shipped to the US, where racer, designer, and chicken farmer Carroll Shelby put them together with a Ford V-8 engine and chassis that he built. Shelby had won at Le Mans in an Aston Martin, and so Ford Motor Company approached him to design a car that they could sell in showrooms. It was an era of more powerful cars than had ever been seen, but one that would not last for more than 10 (Continued on page 22)
