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NCSC Chief Executive Officer, Ciaran Martin, delivers a speech in Tallinn, Estonia.

It is a pleasure to be here and I am honoured by the invitation.

Estonia is a relatively new but increasingly important partner for the UK not just in cyber security, but in all things digital.

Your admirable leadership of digital government is something we have been delighted to join with you in pursuing. We are, frankly, in awe of your two decades of global leadership in the social delivery of technology.

Moreover, we have a strong and developing security partnership with Estonia; the UK Foreign Secretary visited last week and saw the 800 UK troops currently stationed here in support of your security.

Given all this, it is only right that we face up to the threat side of the digital revolution together.

So, thank you for having me.

I acknowledge the unusual position I am in today as the representative of a member state that is due to leave the European Union in around a year and a half’s time. So, as you discuss the next phase of a digital single market it is in the knowledge that the UK’s legal order will in the future be separate from that of the European Union and that single market. It is therefore, to my mind, even more important that we engage in this dialogue.

It is a dialogue, I hope, that we can continue as friends. Looking around the room I can see individuals representing organisations that we at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, a part of GCHQ, call friends.

Indeed, I see some individuals from other countries that over the course of three and a half years heading the UK’s cyber security effort I have come to value as personal friends; who have reached out to help in times of difficulty, and whom we have been glad to help too. 

Over the past decade or so, as the West has begun to treat cyber security with the seriousness it deserves, we have forged deep and operationally powerful partnerships with some of the member states represented here today. 

We have also, we hope, played an important role in the development of European thinking in areas like standards and incident response. We hope we’ve helped through our work with CERT-EU on incidents and ENISA and ETSI on standards.

As the next phase of the UK’s relationship with the rest of Europe takes shape, we will want to take these partnerships further and develop new ones with the countries represented in this room.

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