Team

Erkki Leego’s role in the EU CyberNet project is to inspire and lead a team of professionals to achieve the project’s goals. Building a community of cyber experts in the European Union and using them to promote the security of the digital society in different parts of the world is a vital mission and an exciting challenge. He joined the RIA and CyberNet team in February 2021, when project manager Siim invited him to join his team.

Erkki has more than 25 years of experience in IT management, Cybersecurity, knowledge management, and teaching. He has managed the digital transformation of the Riigikogu, the largest health care provider in Estonia Tartu University Hospital, the Estonian Genome Center, and the University of Tartu. At age 24, he has worked as an information management adviser to the President of the Republic’s Office. In the consulting company Leego Hansson, he has advised the IT management, digital transformation, and Cybersecurity of more than 150 organizations with his team. Erkki has a master’s degree in informatics from the University of Tartu and teaches IT strategic management in a master’s course at the same university. At the time of the CORONA-19 emergency, he played a crucial role in leading 18 000+ organization smoothly to distance work and learning. Erkki’s home is in Tartu, but his work often takes him physically and virtually to Tallinn, Europe, and sometimes outside Europe.

Lauri Aasmann joined the team in 2022 to enable better and smoother call for action process for the project’s partners and stakeholders. Based on his skills and experience with managerial tasks, Lauri is coordinating the training and consultation missions and upholding the CyberNet’s training and services catalogue. He sees the need to put additional energy in this direction, as the project’s visibility is growing, and the high quality of our services is a priority for both the European Commission and RIA.

He is very happy to be part of such a capable and professional team and is eager to use his IT management knowledge to further improve the efficiency of internal work processes. He carries a can-do attitude and always tries to find a way to solve a problem. Lauri believes that the most important thing in a team is trust and a clear division of roles. He hopes to be a support to both the team and the project management with his intelligence, balanced attitude, and friendliness.

Lauri is a lawyer by education from Tartu University but has always been fascinated by IT and cyber, so much so that he is currently studying IT management in Tallinn University. A professional connection to cyber security has accompanied Lauri through all jobs and different roles have developed him both as a person and a professional. His professional career has been challenging working as a district prosecutor specializing in IT crime or as an IT lawyer in a bank’s IT division. For nine years he served as the Head of Law Branch at NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, addressing novel legal problems related to cyberspace and international cyber norms development, resulting in the publishing of the Tallinn Manual 2.0.  As an Ambassador of the NATO CCDCOE, he continues an affiliation with the CCDCOE and contributes to building new partnerships.

Lauri is affiliated with RIA since 2019 when he became the Deputy Director General and the Director of Cyber Security of RIA, a national center of excellence that develops and secures the foundations of the Estonian information society. Before joining EU CyberNet, he was leading the work of experts in areas of Crisis Management (CERT-EE), Critical Information Infrastructure Protection (CIIP), IT Baseline Security System (ISKE), and Cyber Security Analysis.

Liina joined CyberNet in February 2021 to lead the creation of the Regional Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Competence Centre in the Dominican Republic. This role follows up her previous work in the region through the EU Cyber4Dev project, where she served as Consortium Partner Leader, providing policy guidance and coordinating Estonian contribution to the first global EU cyber capacity building project.

She is thrilled to be part of the CyberNet team of highly driven specialists working under Estonian Information System Authority (RIA), a public agency whose purpose is to bring together Estonia’s cyber and e-Gov expertise to develop, administer and protect the best digital society of the world.

Liina has had a diverse career, looking at cybersecurity and international co-operation from a variety of angles since 2007, as a diplomat in NATO, Cybersecurity Adviser at the Estonian Ministry of Defence, Director of International Relations at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and at RIA. Forever interested in digital innovation and its applications for common good, she has also worked as the Director of Tallinn Digital Summit, a HoSG level conference on artificial intelligence hosted by the Government Office of Estonia. Liina has also held a variety of policy roles at the Estonian Ministry of Defence, including 3 years as arms control adviser.

Her graduate and postgraduate studies and academic work have taken her to the universities of Tartu, St-Petersburg, Oslo, Castellón and the NATO Defence College in Rome.

Alongside all this, she is a proud mother of 4, and combines her domestic kingdom with extensive travel, long distance running, culinary delights and extreme adventures.

For Silja-Madli Ossip, it is important that what she does at work is something she truly cares about and that it offers both challenges and opportunities for development. The EU CyberNet project meets all of these criteria, entrusting her with a wide range of tasks. Silja has been involved in the project almost since its inception – it was she who helped to draft the tender for the European Commission that would go on to win the Information System Authority the procurement and bring EU CyberNet funding to Estonia. She began putting the tender together in spring 2019 and started working on the project itself in September of that year.

Silja lives in Tallinn, but often finds herself on business trips. These mostly take her to Belgium, but also to other parts of Europe, and from time to time to more exotic destinations like Tunisia and Singapore. Previously, Silja held a variety of posts supporting the state in the digital and cyber fields, including in Brussels as part of the team for the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. She has a Bachelor’s degree from University of Tartu and Master’s degree in International Relations from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Maria joined the team in September 2022 to ensure effective communication activities for EU CyberNet’s actions around the world. Her main focuses are handling public relations, information output and social media presence. For Maria, it is important to protect EU CyberNet’s brand and make sure it is visible to all relevant parties and audiences.

Previously, Maria has managed marketing and communication roles for several private and public sector organisations, including Estonian Blood Donation Centre. Regardless of the industry, her core value has always been: “Good communication strategy makes the organisation feel smart. Great communication strategy makes the audience feel smart.” That is why her focus is to find potential audiences for EU CyberNet in all sorts of different environments and channels and make them notice cybersecurity topics.

Maria has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Development from Tallinn University of Technology and a Master’s degree in Marketing Management from the University of Tartu. Besides that she has completed countless different training courses in brand building, social media marketing, growth marketing and graphic design.

César Moliné Rodríguez serves as Regional Representative of the Cybersecurity and Cybercrime Competence Centre in Dominican Republic (LAC4). He is in charge of managing and coordinating the day-to-day operations of the Center, including cooperation with national administrations, industry, academia and the private sector to support the growth and integration of the Centre on the global cybersecurity ecosystem.

César is a lawyer specialized in business law and new technologies with more than 20 years of experience in the areas of e-commerce and digital signatures, privacy and cybersecurity. Among his functions, he has served as Director of Cybersecurity, Electronic Commerce and Digital Signature of the Dominican Institute of Telecommunications (INDOTEL), Working Group Coordinator of the Global Forum of Cybernetic Expertise (GFCE), and is also a representative of the Dominican Republic in the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) of the Council of Europe.

He has various degrees in areas such as Electronic Commerce from Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Electronic Government from Universidad de Chile. He also has studies on New Technologies Law from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, ICT Policy Development from the Korea Development Center, Regulation of Public Utilities from the University of Florida and Regulation of Telecommunications from Neotelis and the United States Telecommunications Institute, as well as in Cybersecurity from Universidad de León and from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and International Law from Reading University.

He is a rum enthusiast and connoisseur and he divides his free time between Scubadiving and Geocaching.

Kristiina Ramat joined the Information System Authority and EU CyberNet in March 2021 and her role in the EU CyberNet project is to provide administrative support with regard to tenders, logistics, budget and other administrative assignments. For Kristiina, it is important to keep hectic and complex projects on track, and to move forward no matter the challenge.

Prior to joining EU CyberNet, Kristiina has been working in the field of administration since 2008. She has worked as an assistant to a Resident Twinning Advisor at the Ministry of Environment, as a business administration in an international pharmaceutical company, and as administrative support at the Executive Director´s Office at the European Agency for the Operational Management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice (eu-LISA). During the past 5 years, she worked as a course coordination specialist at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (NATO CCDCOE).

Kristiina Ramat graduated from the Tallinn University of Technology with a degree in Public Administration.

Kristiina lives in Tallinn, but her travels sometimes take her either physically or virtually to Europe.

Toomas Mölder main role is Technical Lead of the EU CyberNet, bridging the expertise across the European Union (EU), establish a network and a practical learning platform for cyber capacity building, strengthening cybersecurity globally. His tasks include planning of platform architecture, coordination of application development and maintenance in agile framework.

Toomas acts also as an expert in various fields, including national data exchange layer in the Estonian State Information System Authority (RIA).
In 2016-2021 at RIA, Toomas’s tasks were related to one of Estonia’s e-government cornerstones, X-Road (X-tee) development and management, specialising development of supervisory and monitoring solutions as well as publishing its statistics as open data.

Toomas has more than 35 years of experience in IT development, management, and lead. He has led the development of Tallinn City / municipality IT systems, Baltic Stock Exchanges, various private and public information systems, and registries. He feels himself comfortably both in numbers and visualizations, having tools like MS Excel, SQL, Python, Bash, etc as integration tools.

Toomas has a master’s degree in informatics from the University of Tartu (cum kaude applied mathematics, 1986). His home is in Tallinn, free time is spent together with spouse while practicing social dancing, also invested into own garden together with flowers, butterflies and birdies.

Toomas speaks Estonian, English and Russian as well as some basics of Finnish, Swedish, Latvian and Spanish.

Adria joined EU CyberNet in March 2023.

With a degree in Business Administration, Adria has strong know-how in her professional field. She has more than 3 years of experience in the administration area developing as an administrative assistant for an international logistics company, also as an executive assistant and in charge of mobilization in a global IT company.

Adria is a proactive, persistent, responsible, passionate and committed person with the proposed goals. She enjoys challenges as they provide knowledge and growth in her professional and personal path.

Living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Adria loves the local beaches and the warm climate of the Caribbean.