Cyber Policy Studies Affiliate Professor and Senior Research Fellow
Mr. Jaan Priisalu was the founding Director General of the Estonian Information Systems Authority (RIA) which is an umbrella government agency in charge of the entire e-services of the country, to include the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT). He also served on the Management Board of the European Union Agency for Cyber Security (ENISA). He founded, and was the second in command, of the Küber Kaitselliit (Cyber Defense Unit) of the Estonian Defense League in 2008; he remains a Committee of Elders member to this day.
While at Cybernetica, Jaan was one of the developers and implementers of Estonian national ID card and digital signature infrastructure which is the hallmark of Estonia’s unique e-society and paperless government. Additionally, he served as the head of IT Risk Management at Swedbank, the largest bank in the Nordics as well as the Director of Payment Cards and Information Security at Union Bank in Estonia.
From a research perspective, Jaan has been an Affiliate Professor of Cyber Policy Studies since 2021 serving on various contracts and grants to include one with NATO. Prior to that, he led the white team of the largest NATO cyber exercise (Locked Shields), in his role as Senior Research Fellow at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Center of Excellence (NATO CCD-COE) over several years. Jaan was also the Chair of Network Software in the Department of Computer Science at the School of Information Technologies at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech). There, he also held a research position at the Centre for Digital Forensics and Cyber, in the Department of Software and lectured on Mass Attacks and Defense. He has also lectured on Information Security at the Estonian Business School, in Tallinn.
Jaan is an Estonian national; is fluent in Estonian, Russian and English; and is an engineer in automated control systems. He holds and Master of Science in Informatics and Parallelism from the University of Paul Sabatier in France, a Master of Science in Computer Science from Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, a Cyber Defense certificate form the Swedish Defense College, and a Diploma in Economic Intelligence from l’École Nationale d’Administration in France.