UK Cabinet Minister Francis Maude today announced the launch of a new organisation aimed at tackling the growing threat of hostile cyber attacks.
The Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT-UK will work in partnership with other international security agencies and will also bring together the Cyber Security Incident Response Team (CIST) and the Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP) in an effort to provide a more coordinated and effective response in the event of national cyber security incidents.
CERT-UK has four main objectives.
- The UK to tackle cyber crime and be one of the most secure places in the world to do business in cyberspace
- The UK to be more resilient to cyber attacks and better able to protect our interests in cyberspace
- The UK to have helped share an open, stable and vibrant cyberspace which the UK public can use safely and that supports open societies
- The UK to have the cross-cutting knowledge, skills and capability it needs to underpin all our cyber security objectives.
They also intend on raising awareness of security vulnerabilities, tackling cyber crime, providing a centre of excellence for security skills, and have particular focus on defending the country's 'Critical National Infrastructure'. As part of this role they will issue alerts, advisories, and security related news via the CERT-UK website.
As to how effective these defences against hackers are remains to be seen but it seems almost certain that there will be more news relating to CERT-UK's effectiveness or otherwise in the near future.
The full text of Francis Maude's speech regarding the launch of CERT-UK is available here and CERT-UK's website provides further details here.
