Information Sharing on Cyber Threats
The NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency announced on 16 December it has signed an Industry Partnership Agreement (IPA) with FireEye aimed at sharing cyber-related information, further strengthening NATO-industry collaborative cyber defence. This is the ninth such IPA the NCI Agency has entered into, supporting the leadership decision at the Warsaw Summit earlier this year that sharing is the optimum method of mounting an effective response to cyber vulnerability.
Specifically, sharing timely information on cyber threats will allow both parties to enhance situational awareness and better protect their networks, facilitating early, rapid bilateral exchange of unclassified technical information on threats and vulnerabilities.
“If we are going to move faster than the cyber threats we face, then it is absolutely imperative that we exchange timely and actionable threat information with industry,” said Maj.Gen. (ret.) Koen Gijsbers, General Manager of the NCI Agency. “Our existing IPA have already shown impressive results that are making a real difference to the NCI Agency and our industry partners. FireEye’s depth of expertise from responding to many of the largest cyber breaches in the world will be very valuable to the IPA framework. We look forward to a productive partnership.”
“Public and private sector organizations face the same challenge of managing a large number of low-fidelity data and alerts from traditional security offerings like next generation firewalls, endpoint, and intrusion prevention systems – masking real threats and slowing response,” said Tony Cole, Vice President and global government Chief Technology Officer, FireEye. “In forming an information sharing partnership with NATO, we add additional visibility to FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence that helps protect our customers and offer high-fidelity intelligence that enables better threat detection and faster response on NATO’s networks and systems.”