Interesting to see that today, February the 1st, the UK Government announced that it has merged two agencies responsible for managing the security of the UK’s Critical Network Infrastructure.  The two agencies are, NISCC (the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre) and NSAC (M15’s National Security Advice Centre).  The new agency will now be called the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI).

CPNI will provide advice to businesses and organisations that make up the UK’s network infrastructure to protect it from criminals, terrorists, those conducting nation-state and industrial espionage.  An example of the type of information provided is CPNI’s Top Ten Security Guidelines.

This is an interesting development as it clearly marks the merging of physical and information security disciplines.  Done correctly and with the proper support from other agencies this could be a very smart positive move by the UK to further protect its commercial and national assets. 

It also highlights the need in this country for an independent, expert and trusted Computer Emergency Response Team to advice business, government agencies and other organisations on how best protect their networks from attack.

Update on Research into Irish CERT
As part of BH Consulting’s into establishing a Computer Emergency Response Team in Ireland, Senior Consultant Brian Honan attended the TF-CSIRT and FIRST (Forum of Incident Response Teams) conference held in Budapest Hungary.  TF-CSIRT and FIRST are forums for CERTs to come together and share knowledge and experiences.  It has proven to be a very worthwhile trip with contacts established with many European CERTs and key industry members which will prove beneficial to the Irish CERT once, hopefully, it is established

About the Author: bhimport

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