June 26th, 2008

Tech heavyweights launch security response consortium

Posted by Ryan Naraine @ 12:33 pm

Categories: Apple, Browsers, Cisco, Data theft, Microsoft, Punditocracy, Responsible disclosure, Vulnerability research, Zero-day attacks

Tags: Security Threat, Information Technology, Consortium, ICASI, Security, Ryan Naraine

Interesting bit of news coming out of the FIRST Conference in Vancouver today:  Five big-name IT firms have created a non-profit consortium aimed at “proactively driving excellence and innovation in security response.”

The group — called ICASI (Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet) — counts Cisco, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks and Microsoft Corp among its founding members.

There are a lot of of high-profile companies grappling with security response issues missing from that list (Google, Apple, Sun, HP, Mozilla, etc.) but it’s likely ICASI will take in new members going forward.

It’s not quite clear what exactly ICASI will do to improve security response processes.  Here’s the PR-speak from the launch press release:

During the last few years, common Internet security threats have evolved from wide-reaching worms and viruses to more sophisticated, stealth attacks that may begin to simultaneously target multiple products or shared protocols in multiple products. ICASI will allow IT vendors to work together to address multi-vendor security threats. The consortium will provide a mechanism for international vendor and customer involvement, and allow for a government-neutral way of resolving significant global, multi-product security incidents.

The organization is organized around four guiding principles:

• Customer security —  IT vendors will be better able to identify and resolve multi-vendor security threats quickly, thereby helping to reduce the security threat impact and improve customer security.
• Agility and effectiveness — ICASI is committed to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-vendor threat resolution and security response practices.
• Collaboration and trust — ICASI creates a unique environment where information, necessary to quickly solve security-related threats, can be shared, as appropriate.
• Leadership and innovation — ICASI includes leading IT companies from around the world and leverages their expertise to innovate security response excellence, which it shares with the industry.

Here’s information on joining ICASI.