Estonia: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger

Lauri Almann didn't immediately understand what he was being told. He was at police headquarters watching a bank of TV screens depicting the destruction of the mediaeval quarter of his nation's capital. Live CCTV feeds showed rioters smashing windows and looting. A colleague entered the room to tell him the Government was having trouble posting press releases to its website. “Why are you bothering us with this?” asked Almann, his focus still on the violent images. “You don't understand, said the colleague, I think we're under cyber-attack.” Five years ago, the small but very modern country of Estonia came under the first ever sustained cyber-attack against the infrastructure of an entire nation. The assault nearly brought the country to its knees, but it survived and prospered. So what did Estonia – and the world – learn from the attack? What still needs to be done to prevent this happening again? And how has the nation's dream of reinventing itself as ‘E-stonia’ – one of the most wired places in the world – been realised over the past five years? Steve Mansfield-Devine went to Estonia to find out.