CyberWire Daily - Cyber without borders: Reporters notebook. [Special Edition]

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

In this special Reporter’s Notebook, Maria Varmazis⁠⁠⁠⁠, host here at N2K CyberWire, takes listeners behind the scenes of our three-part series on Cyber Coalition 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. After exploring real-time incident response, cross-border coordination, and the broader stakes of collective cyber defense, this episode offers a more personal, behind-the-scenes look at how the reporting came together. Hosted by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence, the exercise brought together allied military, government, and industry teams inside NATO’s secure cyber range. Here, Maria reflects on moments that didn’t make the final cut — the atmosphere inside the facilities, the pace of covering a live exercise, and the small, human details that added texture to the larger story. If you haven’t yet, be sure to listen to all three episodes of the series to hear the full story from the ground at Cyber Coalition 2025. Episode one can be found ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Episode two can be found ⁠here⁠.  Episode three can be found ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Cyberwire Network, powered by N2K. When cyber threats strike, minutes matter. Booz Allen brings the same battle-tested expertise trusted to protect national security to defend today's leading global organizations. They safeguard their data, strengthen enterprise resilience, and mobilize in minutes across energy, health care, financial services, and manufacturing. Their teams don't just respond. They anticipate, outthink, and think.

stay ahead of evolving threats. This is powerful protection for commercial leaders only from Booz Allen. See how your organization can prepare today at Boozalan.com slash commercial. Maria Vermazza is here, and I want to welcome you to this bonus episode of Cyber Without Borders. This is episode four out of three. It's my reporter's notebook. The last three episodes were very meticulously scripted and put together after careful research and consideration. But this episode is all about my off-the-cuff reflections of what I

heard and saw in Tallinn Estonia, as well as at the NATO Cyber Range. It's a little peek behind the scenes and making a mini-series like the one you've been listening to, and I hope you enjoy. It is December 1st, 2025-215 p.m. local time in Tallinn, Estonia. I am on the 10th floor of my hotel looking out at the water and a whole bunch of skyscrapers from my hotel room. I just arrived in Tallinn probably a half an hour ago and I had a 10-minute drive from the airport to my hotel. It's very gray and completely overcast, not a bit of blue sky here. It is approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit, damp, windy. I got on a plane in Boston, leaving that weather behind,

and I arrived in Tallinn, Estonia, and found the same exact thing. I am extremely sleep-deprived and desperately need a nap, but I am trying not to nap because the sun is going to set here in probably two hours. So I want to try and take advantage of what little sun I can eke out from between the clouds and see if I can try and adjust. The 10-minute drive from the airport to the hotel, I did see a number of really old Soviet era, like Soviet block, concrete buildings that were very dilapidated.

That's not the word, that were very dilapidated, and, you know, graffiti covered and all that sort of neglected. And then rising up amongst everything, you see these gorgeous new glass skyscrapers with really fun architecture. I'm looking at one right now. really interesting shapes and extremely modern and frankly beautiful to look at. And that modernity is just everywhere.

I thought it was super interesting that I did see one gentleman walking crossing the street wearing a very classic what I think of like 80s khaki trench coat with the classic Soviet like beaver fur cap. It was like one of the first things I saw and I just could not. I could not have asked for something better, just go, hey, you're in the Baltics, that guy. This is me 36 hours without sleep. That's probably not correct. That number is probably completely wrong, but it feels like 36 hours.

I should probably get some food and maybe a nap and find my producer. But yeah, 10-minute take on Tallinn, Estonia. It is almost 4 p.m. and the sun has just a nap. that said. Cold and raw. Yeah, the thought I had about the technological things working that I don't expect to work, it's sort of like when you come back

from a country that has good high-speed rail and you go back to the United States, in my case, and you go, wow, that's what it's like to have really good, high-functioning, high-speed rail. Sort of similar idea here. I'm having like an IT administrative version of that. This is what it's like to look.

live in a country where, uh, or be in a country where things are actually maintained, on an IT scale, at least. Even your hotel's Wi-Fi login page works and it's fast. It's not magic. It's maintenance. The U.S. are very good at building things and terrible at maintaining them. It's always a nice reminder when you go abroad that this is what maintenance actually looks like. Well, good morning from Tallinn. It is 642 in the morning. I would say I'm watching a beautiful sunrise from my hotel room, but no, I am not, because the sun doesn't rise for probably at least another hour. I got 10 hours of sleep last night, so I'm feeling human after being awake way too long. So hopefully I can form some coherent sentences today. I've got a very busy day, this starting early

ish this morning. Actually, I shouldn't see that. I'm just not a morning person. But I'll be interviewing a lot of military folks and a lot of NATO folks today, and I'm sure for them they're going to be like the day's half over. But my day starts at around 845 at the Estonian Ministry of Defense. And from there, we're going to be going to the cyber range that NATO has been using for their cyber exercise with a bunch of NATO allied nations and partners. And I'm going to be talking to a lot of people about what this year's exercise was about and how that experience was.

I'm very curious to learn more. I know almost nothing about what's going on this year by design. I think I'm finding out today. So I'm going into this with some sense of direction of what I want to learn, which is basically tell me about it. And keeping a very open mind about what I'm going to learn. And just very interested to hear how this experience was for different people, why this was important to do this year.

Every year the exercise is a little different, so I'm curious about what the emphasis was this year. I feel just being here, and my association with NATO as an invited guest of NATO was on my hotel receipt when I checked in, and I felt the pause from the person behind the desk when she saw that. It feels heavier here,

because it's much more real. I mean, the threat is, extremely existential, whereas for us in the States, it is much more theoretical unless you are a warfighter. So it's been very interesting just being here and just feeling that. So keeping that up in mind and also hoping to do a little in the field reporting with my amazing producer Liz Stokes, who is also here with me and thankfully much more well-arrested than I am. We have some interesting plans afoot for after our time at Nino today. We're going to bring our microphones with us and walk around tell in and hopefully talk to some ordinary Estonians. So that is going to be super fun. I'm really looking

forward to it. But first, coffee. I really need coffee and some breakfast. And this hotel has a really nice breakfast bar and I'm going to go do that. All right. Chow. It is now to 15 in the afternoon on Tuesday, December 2nd, back in my hotel room. And I just had an incredibly busy morning at NATO Cyber headquarters and cyber range in Tallinn, Estonia. I'm saying that out loud partially because I kind of cannot believe the fire hose that I just drank out of and the experience that I just had. But I'm going to try and download my experience while it's still fresh in my head. So this morning at 8.30, my producer, Liz Stokes, and I walked over to the Estonian

Ministry of Defense. The sun was rising. It was lovely little pink clouds. kind of a balmy morning. And we walked not far from our hotel straight to this very official government building with two large cannons out front. And the Estonian and Ukrainian flags

proudly above the door. And we went through maximum security as you often do in any government building. You know, you know the drill with the metal detector and showing government ID and in our case also our press pass. and we met with our official handler for the day.

Anyone who's done any government or military stuff, you also know that as press, you are never going to be unescorted. And given the sensitivity of what we were going to be potentially exposed to today, there was a lot of handling. But these are the stakes. This is how it goes.

We know the drill. So our handler was very nice, of course. So we were again in the Estonian Ministry of Defense Building. where we met a lot of the people you were going to speak to that day. We had a briefing in a very official press room where we got to learn a little bit about what this year's cyber coalition exercise was and it ends up there as a number of different, essentially what they call storylines,

which were sort of the different challenges that the coalition members and allied partners were going to be exploring this year. I won't get into all the details of each of them, because we had no idea what any of the details were about the cyber coalition exercise before we got here. So we kind of went in really blind and we're learning about it for the first time. And then they're like, here's the information. Got any questions? So I got to put my little journalist hat on.

It was actually quite fun. And again, it's NATO and the military, so they can't tell you any specifics about anything. But they did what they could, giving us the sort of high-level notes on what the exercises were, what the last two weeks have entailed, with the NATO members and allied nations and partners and all the folks participating what they were up to in broadstrokes. And then they said, hey, why don't we then go on to the next step and we're going to actually show you the place where this has all been going on.

And this is where security got extraordinarily tight. So we were escorted into the CR-14 building, which is right around, around the back and next door to the Estonian Ministry of Defense. And we learned later that the Russian embassy is down the street. And apparently a lot of official Russian diplomatic attaché apartments quite literally overlooking a bunch of these buildings that are very, very sensitive not just to Estonia, but also to NATO. So it's just you feel the tension and the stakes are so high and they are so visible and so obvious. So when you get into this building, which again is a military facility, there's a lot of ground rules about what you can and cannot record. Essentially, we had to leave anything that could be potentially Bluetooth enabled or has any radio that it is left behind.

So couldn't take any pictures. Understandably, smartphones are a no-no, smart watches are a no-no. A lot of roles about anything you could potentially photograph. Anytime we in the press were walking anywhere near anybody outside of the main lobby area, We were announced. It's the opposite of look busy. Don't be busy right now. Do nothing sensitive.

So, yeah, because they took us into what appeared to us anyway to be kind of one of the hearts of their operations, which was quite extraordinary to get that level of access. I'll be honest. And you walked down a very nondescript long, long, echoey corridor full of military people in uniform with flags of all sorts of NATO nations. and partners on their shoulders.

And we're all escorted with our handlers there at our sides and our press badges very, very obviously displayed. And of course, we're all holding microphones. So it's pretty obviously we are. We have our NATO handlers. We have our sort of military NATO handlers. And then there's also people representing the cyber range. And I assume also the Estonian Ministry of Defense and the Estonian National Security.

Everybody's got to have input on what is okay and what isn't okay for recording. just audio-wise at this point. Like video is a complete no-no, but just what audio is okay to record. And there are a lot of negotiating about, like, no, you can't even record audio in this hallway. You cannot even record in this open area because potentially people could be talking about the mission

and you could pick that up. And it was like, wow, yeah, the stakes are extraordinarily high. Makes sense. I mean, I'm not complaining about any of this. This totally makes sense, given what they're working on. Even though this is all just exercises, is if there is the potential of anything sensitive being intercepted, you cannot record. So we attempted to negotiate stuff, but the answer was pretty much no, no, no, no, no.

Again, I get it. So I'll try to describe this room that we went into. It is the most nondescript cubicle farm you could possibly imagine. Anything that resembles a window was heavily covered up with several layers of curtains, no way anybody from the outside could see in. the cubicles themselves and you just heard every possible language being spoken in that cube farm.

A lot of hushed voices and my understanding is honestly it's usually dead silent in there because no conversations really should be happening out loud because people are concentrating. But it was a little more active because again people were told stop working. The media's here so I imagine people were chadding

a little more than usual. After we exited that room, we went to another nondescripting room with the windows completely covered and this was, I assume, was essentially the sock for this exercise, but everything, all the screens were off. And in fact, many of the screens were physically covered, maybe because of burn in or something. I'm not sure. Whatever, it doesn't matter. And I can't help but wonder if maybe the intent was to maybe show us a little bit of the sock, maybe some of the screens, but I think that, decision got overruled at some point, given geopolitical tensions right now, I can understand that.

So that's fine. It was just very funny when at one point people kept saying, as you can see with this and that, and I kept thinking to myself, no, we can't see anything because all the screens are off. And then we had a whole spate, I think an hour and a half of interviews with subject matter experts and people who were involved in planning this event and leadership in this event. And also the members of the U.S. team who were representing Team USA at this event. So we got to speak to a number of people, and I'm really thrilled that I did, and I can't wait to share those insights with everybody. I'm extraordinarily grateful that I got to be here for this

and humbled that we were honestly invited and got to pay witness to something that is so often unseen, not just cybersecurity, but just defense, cyber defense in general. I mean, these were essentially, these were the blue teamers. Blue team never gets as much love as it should. It's not as sexy as red teaming. It doesn't get the headlines, but that is really where so much information sharing is happening. That is where I'm finding it hard to put into words. Having known so many people who do blue teaming on the industry side, who often came from the military,

these are the folks who are keeping so many of us safe, and their work often goes completely unnoticed and unknown. It's wonderful knowing that this work is ongoing, and seeing how seriously they take their responsibility to their home nations and to their alliance was really touching and poignant. So it's always very humbling to see them and see how hard they're working. And I'm just really, really glad that I got to see it for myself. Very grateful for the opportunity.

It's 4.11 in the morning, Wednesday morning, December 3rd. I got maybe two hours of sleep. No, four hours of sleep, four hours of sleep. No, three hours of sleep. My body does not know what time it is, so... Meh. I couldn't sleep anymore, and I had to wake up in about half an hour anyway, so I figured might as well wake up and record some audio for a podcast.

Why not? Yesterday was such a whirlwind day. I think I'm going to be spending the entire plane right back to the States well, half conscious because I'm exhausted, but I'll be spending a lot of that time trying to download stuff from my brain. Because what ends up happening with a really busy day like yesterday was, especially when you speak to a lot of people and have a lot of new experiences

and see new things, is it takes a little while, at least for me, for the little planko marbles to cascade down the corridors of my brain and start sorting themselves into a way that makes sense. And oddly, I have found that being half dead on a plane is one of the places where I do my best thinking. I don't know what that says about me, but whatever. In the meantime, I'm going to just finish putting my things away, getting ready for my cab ride, and make myself a very emergency cup of in-hotel room coffee. This machine is super loud.

How is this thing? You know, a kyrig should not be hard to use. Defeated by coffee technology. Listen, I want something. I did something wrong because it's just water coming out. Oh, no. That was my last coffee pod. I don't know what I did wrong.

How did I do this wrong? It's just put the pod in the machine, put the liver down, press the freaking button, and yet all that came out was tinted water. Okay, so that was the last coffee pot in my room. So now I have no coffee. Why did that not work, though? I did the exact same thing I did yesterday. And it worked yesterday, just fine.

Today is yucky water, not hot bean water. I'm really sad about that coffee. And I don't think anything's going to be open when I get to the airport because my flight's so early. Man. This episode was produced by Liz Stokes. mixing, editing, and sound design by Trey Hester. Our executive producer is Jennifer Ibin, with content strategy by Mayon Plout.

Peter Kilpe is our publisher, and I am your host, Maria Vermasas. Thank you so much for listening.