Commonwealth CSIRT community – Extension

Summary

This project extended the ‘Commonwealth Cyber Security Incident Response Team Workshops’ project with the aim of creating an online information-sharing portal for Commonwealth member incident response teams and related professionals.

Details

Aim

The project aims to improve information sharing and incident response strategies, through training, mentoring and peer-to-peer learning across the Commonwealth.

Context

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London in 2018, the UK and Singapore signed a Memorandum of Cooperation committing to collaborate to help support implementation of the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration across the Commonwealth.  The UK launched their Commonwealth Cyber Programme to support implementation of the Declaration.  One of the projects under this programme was the Commonwealth Cyber Security Incident Response Team Workshops with UK and Singapore.  This project was an extension of that project.

Outputs

The main output of the project is an online information-sharing portal, which includes access to Torchlight’s GCHQ accredited cyber security education web/app-based platform. As of 1 July 2021, 37 Commonwealth countries had signed up to the platform, 15 of which are from Africa.

The ‘CSIRT Commonwealth’ online platform domain (https://www.csirtcommonwealth.org/) can only be accessed via secure logins once you have signed up to the platform.  The online platform is designed to create a Community of National Incident Response organisations across the Commonwealth. It is intended to strengthen nCSIRT capabilities, whilst also promoting international cyber security standards and expertise across the community. The Platform is built on three core pillars which enable the population of a Resource Bank, a Retrospective Information Sharing facility of cybersecurity incidents as well as a Remote Learning pillar which captures all the master classes delivered to date.

Activities

The programme will maintain contact with the Commonwealth member states from the previous programme and collaboratively diagnose their current situation, develop capability, and promote community engagement and sharing of information through the CCPC.

The CCPC will serve as the focal point to foster peer to peer learning and collaboration across the states through the use of informal discussion, viewing focused webinars and hosting of a core resource library.

Building from the understanding of the predecessor programme Torchlight will update the Remote Training Needs Analysis (R-TNA) to identify skills gaps and needs across the community and determine the specific focus for offline webinars and live discussions, including the countries who will be part of the mentoring programme.