The UK Government has unveiled a new Cyber Security Information Sharing Partnership (CISP), just as the global Internet is facing what some are calling the “biggest attack in history”.
The new partnership is designed to help businesses tackle cyber-security threats, and will share knowledge from industry analysts and security experts from businesses, MI5, the government’s signals intelligence agency GCHQ, and the Police.
The partnership is set to include a secure online collaboration environment where experts can collaborate in real-time by sharing responses to an ongoing attack.
The formation of the CISP comes in response to comments from the Director General of MI5, Sir Jonathon Evans, who said last year:
The extent of what is going on is astonishing — with industrial-scale processes involving many thousands of people lying behind both State-sponsored cyber espionage and organised crime.
The announcement comes as a distributed denial of service attack, similar to the one that brought IFSEC Global down last month, is being targeted at an organisation called Spamhaus.
The BBC has said that security experts are describing the attack on Spamhaus as “the biggest cyber-attack in history”.
Spamhaus is an international not-for-profit organisation that tracks internet spam, enabling service providers to effectively block spam from their networks.
They recently blocked servers maintained by Dutch host Cyberbunker, who Spamhaus claim are responsible for the attack in conjunction with criminal gangs from Eastern Europe, according to the BBC.
Spamhaus chief executive, Steve Linford, explained the scale of the attack, saying:
If you aimed this at Downing Street they would be down instantly. They would be completely off the internet.
These attacks are peaking at 300 gigabytes per second. Normally when there are attacks against major banks, we’re talking about 50 gigabytes per second.
The scale of the attack is slowing services down across the internet, so if you’re wondering why your connection is a bit slow today, now you know why.
Business imperative
The National Audit Office recently reported that the cost of cybercrime in the UK ranges between GB pound 18-27 billion (US$23-34 billion). The formation of the CISP has been welcomed by cabinet officials and former White House Cyber Security Adviser Howard Schmidt, who said:
In the US, we have seen the emphasis that President Obama has placed on cyber-security, and in particular, steps to protect our critical infrastructure. Many senior leaders in private sector companies are supporting it, and recognizing that it’s not only a security issue, but a business imperative. The launch of the UK CISP is an important step in forging an ongoing partnership between industry and government, promoting information sharing by providing the ability to analyze and redistribute information in a timely, actionable, and relevant manner.
The CISP is part of a GB pound 650m (US$830 million) Government investment into their National Cyber Security Programme over four years.