Nearly 100 teenage girls from nine countries – including first-time delegations from the Bahamas and Fiji – have gathered in the small town of Kehtna this week for CyberWizards, an international camp designed to draw more young women into cyber security.

This week, talk in the small Rapla County town of Kehtna has turned to phishing, firewalls and ethical hacking. Ninety-three girls aged between 13 and 16, drawn from nine countries, are spending 3 to 8 August at CyberWizards, an international cyber security camp for girls now in its fourth year.

The camp is organised by Estonia’s Information System Authority, more commonly known as RIA, the state agency responsible for the country’s cyber security, and is aimed at closing one of the technology sector’s more persistent gaps: the shortage of women in the field.

“The field of cyber security is in increasing need of skilled specialists, and an interest in it often develops as early as at school,” said Tiina Pau, an expert-coordinator at RIA. “The camp gives girls the chance to experience for themselves just how varied, creative and exciting this field really is. If they leave here knowing that they, too, could choose to study IT or pursue a career in cyber security in the future, we will have achieved our goal.”

Participants at this year’s CyberWizards camp during an early session getting to know their host country, Estonia. Photo by Ria.

The organisers’ “greatest reward”, Pau added, comes years later – when a former participant reports that she has gone into IT after all, hoping eventually to work in cyber security herself.

This year’s cohort stretches, as the organisers put it, from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. Alongside 43 girls from Estonia, delegations have travelled from Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ukraine and Cyprus – and, for the first time, from the Bahamas and Fiji. The two island nations are taking part with support from LAC4, the EU-funded Latin America and Caribbean Cyber Competence Centre, and EU CyberNet, a European Union project also implemented by RIA.

A speaker addresses campers during a session at CyberWizards 2026 in Kehtna. Photo by Ria.

Estonia’s own contingent is partly sponsored by Telia, the telecoms operator, which is funding the participation of five Estonian girls. Ingrid Viinapuu, Telia’s head of people and culture, said that although more women were now entering the technology sector, “their representation in many areas of IT and cyber security remains modest” – a gap, she believes, that starts to open as early as school, when pupils first choose their subjects and career paths. Schemes such as CyberWizards, she added, build the confidence and skills that will benefit both the girls themselves and, in time, “Estonia’s digital economy as a whole”.

The week itself is hands-on: working in computer classrooms, the girls tackle practical cyber security exercises, learn the basics of programming and digital security, and take part in workshops on problem-solving and teamwork, before it traditionally closes with a Capture the Flag contest – a competitive exercise in which teams solve puzzles to track down hidden digital clues – that puts their new skills to the test. Organisers say they are just as interested in what happens outside the syllabus: the friendships formed across nine nationalities, and the lesson that the challenges of the digital world are best tackled together.

The camp is co-funded by the European Union and the European Cybersecurity Competence Centre, the EU body that funds and coordinates cyber security capacity-building across the bloc.

Campers at CyberWizards 2026 work through cyber security exercises in one of the camp’s computer classrooms. Photo by Ria.