Cybersecurity Governance in the Digital Age: Insights from Estonia and Beyond

By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- name and describe various types of cybersecurity risks;
- explain how cybersecurity governance is used to mitigate cybersecurity risks;
- describe Estonia's governance structure that is in place to combat cybersecurity attacks;
- explain how current cybersecurity attacks have been mitigated, and what future policy and research challenges can be identified.

Anastasiia Turusinova - course instructor
Vincentius Martinus Franciscus Homburg - PhD, Professor of E-governance at the University of Tartu
Logan Emily Carmichael - PhD candidate in the Johan Skytte Institute for Political Studies and a Junior Research Fellow in e-Governance at the University of Tartu

Topic	Credit	Lectors
1. Introduction to Cybersecurity Governance	6	Anastasiia Turusinova, Logan Emily Carmichael
2. How Governments Broach Cybersecurity Governance	6	Logan Emily Carmichael
3. Cybersecurity Governance and Digitalisation	7	Logan Emily Carmichael
4. Conclusions and Future Research	7	Vincentius Martinus Franciscus Homburg, Logan Emily Carmichael

The course is free of charge.

The course is designed to be completed entirely on the basis of independent learning. Each week, the student should watch the lectures, get familiar with readings and attempt the weekly assignment. All of these study materials are accessed through the Moodle platform. More detailed instructions for completing these activities are available on Moodle. There is a forum on Moodle through which students can interact with each other, and ask questions of the course administrator.

Learning takes place in the online learning environment, which presupposes that students have medium ICT and web communication skills.

This course will immerse participants in the challenges of cybersecurity governance, with a particular focus on challenges that Estonia is faced with. Cybersecurity governance relates to government and broader societal responses to cyberattacks. The course provides an introduction to the core concepts of cybersecurity governance, describes Estonia's governance structure as it is today, and identifies future directions for governance and research on cybersecurity.

The course consists of 4 modules:
Module 1: Introduction to Cybersecurity Governance
Module 2: How Governments Broach Cybersecurity Governance
Module 3: Cybersecurity Governance and Digitalisation
Module 4: Conclusions and Future Research

Participants need to get the final grade 47 or higher to pass the course.

non-differentiated (pass, fail, not present)

The course consists of the following assessment methods:
- Forum discussion (Module I): 10%
- Forum discussion (Module II): 10%
- Forum discussion (Module III): 10%
- Forum discussion-simulation (Module IV): 20%
- Final exam: 50%

Participants need to get the final grade 47 or higher to pass the course.

- Forum discussion (Module I - III): course participants are asked to do “weekly logs” based on reading the news and linking to concepts from the week’s readings and lecture content. The discussion will be moderated by the course teacher. Every student is expected to contribute with minimum one post in the forum discussion on Moodle. Word limit for the task is 150-250 words Assessment criteria: participation in the discussion and correctness of the provided answers. Answers that are not related to the topic of the discussion will be marked as incorrect and will not be counted. Participants need to get grade 7 or higher to pass the assignment. The total weight of the assignment is 10% regarding the final score. - Forum discussion - simulation (Module IV): course participants are split into groups and added to a forum discussion, where cyber crisis situation is described. Each group participant is assigned a role of a different actor is the crisis. Their task is to describe their base response to the crisis (depending on what other group participants say as other actors). The discussion will be moderated by the course teacher. Every student is expected to contribute with minimum one post in the forum discussion. Word limit for the task is 200-300 words. Assessment criteria: participation in the discussion and relevance of the provided answers. Answers that are not related to the topic of the discussion will be marked as incorrect and will not be counted. Participants need to get grade 15 or higher to pass the assignment. The total weight of the assignment is 20% regarding the final score. - Final exam: multiple choice exam. Non-differentiated. To pass, a minimum score of 70% is required. Each course participant will get a set of questions based on the course video lectures and reading materials. Thus, the final exam will evaluate how well the course participant remembers the material from all the Modules completed during the course. Participants need to get 14 grade or higher to pass the quiz and complete the course. There is no time limitation to complete the exam. Two attempts are allowed. The total weight of the assignment is 50% regarding the final score.

Certificate of completion

03.02.2025

Anastasiia Turusinova, anastasiia.turusinova@ut.ee, +372 +372 737 6579