A vacation in Luxembourg

An embassy is sovereign territory for a nation. Embassies let a country conduct diplomatic activities on someone else's soil. They're descendants of the times when a messenger was granted safe passage in a foreign land, but true embassies and ambassadors only appeared in the 1600s. But it was only in 1961 that the Vienna convention made an embassy inviolable—meaning the host couldn't enter the embassy, and diplomats were exempt from taxes, search and most local laws.

In April, 2007, Estonia moved a World War II memorial dedicated to the Soviet army. Immediately after, Estonia was hit by a massive, coordinated cyber-attack that took down government networks, media outlets, and the country's financial outlets. So the country decided to create the world's first Data Embassy: A secure, fortified, government-owned data center in Luxembourg. And like earlier embassies, Luxembourg granted the servers the digital equivalent of a physical embassy.

It's a sobering story of how a nation reliant on digital services can maintain independence—and one all countries should be learning from in today's geopolitical climates. In this session, former Estonian CIO and founder of Digital Nation Siim Sikkut will explain how his country prepared for the worst, and established a global precedent for sovereign infrastructure.