Estonia is so scared of a Russian cyberattack that it's opening a data centre in the UK

Kirill Kudryavtsev/Reuters

Estonia is opening a UK data centre to protect its data from Russian hackers, according to The Financial Times.

The small Baltic state, which was victim to a large Russian cyber attack in 2007, will reportedly use the UK facility to store everything from birth records and government files to banking credentials and other government bureaucracy.

"We have a very aggressive neighbour and we need to be sure that whatever happens to our territory in the future, Estonia can survive," Taavi Kotka, the government’s cyber chief, told The Financial Times. "In Estonia we already vote over the internet, we pay taxes over the internet — there’s almost nothing now we don't do digitally."

Estonia reportedly already stores some data in Estonian embassies around the world but it wants to strengthen its overseas back up strategy as tensions escalate with Russia.

Kotka added that if something "really bad happened, we want to be able to say that our country still remains — we will still be able to be a country even if we don’t have our territory."

UK and Estonian officials are reportedly in negotiations as to where to store the country's data in the UK.

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