FIRST address to the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace

By Maarten Van Horenbeeck, Board Member of FIRST

Monday, September 23rd, 2018

Maarten Van Horenbeeck speaking to the GCSC

On Wednesday, September 19th, FIRST was invited to provide a statement to the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, a multi-stakeholder group that helps "promote mutual awareness and understanding among the various cyberspace communities working on issues related to international cybersecurity". Our statement by Maarten Van Horenbeeck, Board Member of FIRST, is documented below. You can also download our statement as a PDF here.

Esteemed Commissioners, dear invited guests,

We are an association of 438 cybersecurity teams in government, private sector and academia from 90 countries. Our members are often referred to as the “fire brigade” of the internet and are the first ones to respond to major cybersecurity incidents.

Our goal is to make Computer Security Incident Response Teams, or CSIRT, more effective.

We do this in four ways:

  1. Ensuring a wealth of capable and competent incident response teams exist that are ready to respond to complex incidents, through training and education;
  2. Building a community where CSIRT can easily find other trusted incident responders that have specific skills, such as product security teams, or proximity to an affected network, system or user. We do this by expanding our membership base, and through our Fellowship program;
  3. Ensuring CSIRT have a common set of tools, including technological standards, they can use to more effectively respond to an incident;
  4. Educate third party stakeholders, such as policymakers, on the work of our member teams, and how they can help address our ongoing needs and challenges. FIRST deeply values the work of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, and applaud and support your efforts to promote mutual understanding between the various communities operating the internet.

As you embark on your discussions here in Singapore, there are some specific challenges I would like to bring to your attention from our community, that we recommend considering:

With this, I thank you again for your work, and we look forward to contributing to the important work of this commission in any way we can be of support. Thank you for the opportunity to deliver this address, and I wish you a productive meeting.

Maarten Van Horenbeeck, Board Member, Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams