NEWS: New body making an impact against cyberattacks

CYBERJAYA: Countries can now react faster to cyberattacks, thanks to the establishment of The International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (Impact) Global Response Centre a year ago.

Prior to Impact’s establishment, there was a lack of co-ordination between governments, Internet service providers (ISPs) and antivirus companies in any reaction to cyberthreats.

Datuk Mohd Ain, chairman of Impact, said that when cyberattacks were launched against Estonia’s parliament, banking and newpaper websites in 2007, the attacks came from various places in the world, making it difficult for the country’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to respond effectively.

“The CERT struggled to call in the governments and ISPs from the countries where the attacks came from for a co-ordinated response,” he said.

Worse, Estonia did not have diplomatic ties with some of the other countries.

Thus, the idea for Impact, which comprises a cyberthreats resource centre, was born. An international organisation headquartered here, it is a one-stop contact point for countries that come under cyberattack.

“Impact bands governments all over the world against cyberthreats. It also works with prominent network security giants such as Trend Micro, F-Secure, Symantec and Kaspersky,” Ain said.

Expert help

Through Impact’s partnership with these security vendors, countries can get cutting-edge expertise.

Raymond Genes, chief technology officer at Trend Micro, said Impact helps governments better understand cyberthreats and to be better prepared to handle such attacks.

If Estonia were to be attacked today, all the CERT authority would have to do is call Impact, which would then organise and co-ordinate the response by the governments and ISPs in the countries where the attacks were originating from.

Genes also said that Impact provides collective intelligence on online security.

Syarisa Abubakar, director of policy at Impact’s centre of policy and international co-operation, said Impact has rolled out its services to 39 countries after just one year in operation.

“These countries include those in Africa, The Middle East and Asia Pacific. Some are developing nations where there are no cyberlaws or CERTs,” she said.

Impact also assesses the cyberneeds of some of these countries. “We have already done a needs assessment for Afghanistan and will be doing the same for East African companies at the end of this month,” Syarisa said.

“We will be reviewing the cyberlaws in these countries and their technical expertise requirements in the event of a cyberattack,” she added.