President Kaljulaid at CyCon 2019: Cyber attacks should not be easy weapon | News | ERR 11/10/2022, 14:25 operations, which cause injury or death to persons or damage or destruction of objects, could amount to use of force or armed attack under the U.N. Charter. We here in Estonia are very much dependent on a stable and secure cyberspace. Such harmful effects could be caused by a cyber operation, which for example, targets digital infrastructure or services necessary for the functioning of society. And let's not forget – the growing digitalization of our societies and services can also lower the threshold for harmful effects. In order to prevent such effects, states maintain all rights, in accordance with international law, to respond to harmful cyber operations either individually or in a collective manner. Among other options for collective response, Estonia is furthering the position that states which are not directly injured may apply countermeasures to support the state directly affected by the malicious cyber operation. The countermeasures applied should follow the principle of proportionality and other principles established within the international customary law. International security and the rules-based international order have long benefited from collective efforts to stop the violations. We have seen this practice in the form of collective selfdefense against armed attacks. For malicious cyber operations, we are starting to see this in https://news.err.ee/946827/president-kaljulaid-at-cycon-2019-cyber-attacks-should-not-be-easy-weapon Page 7 of 9