Member Article

East Midlands and CERT-UK launch first regional information sharing partnership for business

The UK’s first regional scheme to bring businesses and academia together with police and government to share and report cyber-security information has been launched in the East Midlands.

The Cyber-security Information Sharing Partnership (CiSP), part of CERT-UK, has worked in partnership with law enforcement to create this online area solely for East Midlands based companies.

Termed the ‘East Midlands regional node’, members are able to anonymously or publicly share information on cyber incidents they are seeing to help them help themselves to protect against cyber threats such as fraud, denial of service attacks and network intrusion resulting in data loss.

The goal is not only for firms to better respond to incidents but also protect themselves in advance in order to minimise the impact of potential threats by gaining awareness before it is too late.

The partnership reflects the development of Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCUs) across England and Wales and also supports CERT-UK’s goals of making the UK more resilient to cyber threats and a safer place to do business. Deputy Chief Constable Peter Goodman, leading the East Midlands ROCU and the national lead for Cyber Crime at the Association of Police Officers (ACPO) said:

“Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our local and regional economies and we take potential cyber threats to them extremely seriously.

“There is much that companies can do to protect themselves. We know that basic ‘cyber hygiene’ steps can prevent around 80% of cyber-attacks. Similarly, we know that companies who have experienced and successfully dealt with a cyber-incident have knowledge and advice that others will find invaluable. This pertinent information, combined with our law enforcement expertise and the technical skill of our partners at CERT-UK will be the true benefit of this partnership.”

Chris Gibson, Director of CERT-UK, added that an introduction day held at the University of Derby proved very beneficial, “attendees were treated to presentations from industry leading organisations such as BT, FireEye, BAE Systems, Trend Micro and also had the node champion SJG Digital, a Cyber Essentials accredited company, on hand to input. CERT-UK also conducted an information sharing exercise using CiSP which received excellent feedback.

’We now have over 25 companies signed up and, along with our own engagement work, they are helping us publicise this incredibly useful tool out to other companies in the region.“

The regional node has a private sector ‘champion’ to promote the partnership, Stuart Green, of Lincolnshire digital engineering specialists SJG Digital.

He said: “CiSP is a valuable resource for organisations of any size and will greatly increase their collective cyber-crime knowledge whilst reducing their risk of being compromised. With UK SMEs playing a huge role in supply chains worldwide, it is critical to the nation’s interests that we contribute to these supply chains as securely as possible. CiSP, combined with other government initiatives such as Cyber Essentials, helps UK organisations achieve this successfully.”

Companies can join the East Midlands regional node on CiSP immediately and those interested can contact the East Midlands node owner SJG Digital to get the process started.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Stuart J. Green Digital Engineering Ltd. .