Meeting of Latin American and Caribbean Computer Security Incident Response Teams

24/05/2012

The term CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) generally defines a team of individuals devoted to security incident management. Incident management includes applying technological and organizational measures that will help mitigate their impact. The main focus is to promote the dissemination of and training in CSIRT methodology.

The existence of CSIRTs is a key tool for mitigating the impact caused by various computer security incidents. However, until recently, there was no access to courses or materials in the languages most spoken in the region. In addition, there were not many of these teams in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The goal of the AMPARO Project, a LACNIC initiative the first phase of which was supported by the IDRC/CDRI of Canada, is to strengthen the dissemination, knowledge and attention of Computer Security issues in the different countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, mainly at private company and social organization level.

During the LACNIC XVII meeting held in Quito, LACNIC hosted the second meeting of the region’s Computer Security Incident Response Teams organized within the framework of the AMPARO Project. This meeting was attended by more than 40 experts representing 20 teams –some new, others vastly experienced.

This type of meetings are particularly important as they allow teams from different countries to meet and share in an environment of trust; this will later allow them to cooperate efficiently during the incident management process.

During this meeting, which was conducted in a closed environment in order to guarantee the confidentiality of any information shared in the room, the teams agreed to begin working on a set of measurements at regional level based on which statistics will be prepared that will help work jointly on security incident prevention and mitigation. The aim is to be able to present some statistics at the LACNIC XVIII meeting that will take place in Montevideo during the month of October.