Eslami is a third-year doctoral student in information and communication technology at Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech), and the topic of his research is "On the use of defensive schemes for hardware security". The supervisors of the doctoral thesis are Professor Samuel Pagliarini and Senior Researcher Tara Ghasempouri of the Department of the Computer Systems of Tallinn University of Technology.

The award-winning Eslami considers the functioning of the Estonian e-state as a whole to be important. "All companies and data-intensive organizations that use chips in their work and production processes must think about hardware security. We have proven that it is possible to insert Trojans into the production cycle of the latter, which can be used to attack IT systems, collect user data and breach data security," explained Eslami.

He added that hardware security is increasingly important these days, as any country may be interested in threatening another country's critical digital infrastructure. "By strengthening the security standards of devices, as researchers, we support the development of the local technology landscape, and we also contribute to the creation of a durable and secure digital future in Estonia."

Gert Jervan, Dean of the School of Information Technology, points out that in recent years TalTech has made significant contributions to the development of hardware and IT system security research capabilities. The mentioned area was also one of the focus topics of the research measure of the IT Academy program of the Education and Youth Board.

"While people's awareness of threats lurking in software and the web has increased over the past decade, less thought has been given to threats from hardware," said Jervan. He noted that as a result of the work of Eslami with the hardware security research group, Estonia, as the leader of a digital country, is better protected, and solutions have been reached that make it possible to create more attack-resistant and secure hardware on which software can rely.

According to Ivo Lasn, a board member of the Estonian Information Technology and Telecommunications Union, it is impressive that in a situation where we do not have a chip industry in Estonia, the security of the digital state is dealt with at the academic level at the Tallinn University of Technology from this angle.

"In the international cyber world, in addition to software-based solutions, hardware can also be an object of attack. For example, the chip in everyday Estonian ID cards is hardware that must be secure. In the case of digital solutions, trust and security are primary from the users' point of view.