About CERT Estonia

In order to protect an organisation’s assets and ensure their security, timely detection of security incidents, their proper handling, as well as appropriate follow-up activities are of vital importance. The management of these activities might have a considerable impact and, thus, they should be of critical importance for all organisations. Up to 2005, there were no organisations in Estonia with direct responsibility for handling security incidents, ensuring respective co-ordination between different organisations, and providing assistance in responding to security threats. Also missing was a national contact point for international co-operation in the field of IT security.

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Estonia (CERT Estonia), established in 2006, is an organisation responsible for the management of security incidents in .ee computer networks. Its task is to assist Estonian internet users in the implementation of preventive measures in order to reduce possible damage from security incidents and to help them in responding to security threats. CERT Estonia deals with security incidents that occur in Estonian networks, are started there, or have been notified of by citizens or institutions either in Estonia or abroad.

The support provided by CERT Estonia depends on the type and severity of a security incident, on the number of users potentially affected by it and on resources available for the organisation.

Security incidents are prioritised according to their potential severity and scope. The following aspects are taken into account in the prioritisation of security incidents: the number of affected users; the type of an incident; the target of an attack as well as the attack’s point of origin; required resources for handling the incident. High-priority incidents include, for instance: attacks that may jeopardise people’s lives, attacks at internet infrastructure (name servers, major network nodes and large-scale automatic attacks at web servers), etc. As CERT Estonia does not render services to end users, the latter should, in case of security incidents, turn to system administrators either at their internet service provider or in their organisation, to network administrators or customer support.
CERT Estonia offers the following services: Incident handling – receiving incident reports, assigning priorities to incidents according to their severity level, performing incident analysis, responding to incidents, giving assistance in incident response, co- ordinating incident response activities.

Giving information and issuing warnings – informing users about attacks, viruses, worms, Trojans occurring in .ee networks and notifying about vulnerabilities discovered in the most widely used systems and applications in Estonia. Warnings are mainly issued in cases of attacks with higher level of severity, extremely widespread viruses, and highly severe vulnerabilities. Once CERT Estonia has managed to successfully launch the above-mentioned services, the organisation also intends to contribute to the promotion of awareness- raising in the field of IT security.

CONTACT
As CERT Estonia does not render services to end users, the latter should, in case of security incidents, turn to system administrators either at their internet service provider or in their organisation, to network administrators or customer support.

CERT-EE is an organisation responsible for the management of security incidents in .ee computer networks. Also CERT-EE is a national contact point for international co-operation in the field of IT security.

CERT Estonia offers the following services:
Incident handling – receiving incident reports, assigning priorities to incidents according to their severity level, performing incident analysis, responding to incidents, giving assistance in incident response, coordinating incident response activities.

Department for Handling Information Security Incidents
Hillar Aarelaid - CEO of CERT Estonia
hillar.aarelaid[ät]cert.ee
+372 663 0251

Aivar Jaakson - Information Security Adviser
aivar.jaakson[ät]cert.ee
+372 663 0253