Forge Institute enhances its Emerging Threat Center with CISA’s Cyber Information Sharing and Collaboration Program
Today, Forge Institute announced a key new partnership with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to aid in the defense of Forge Institute’s Emerging Threat Center (ETC) members’ cyber, IT, and OT platforms and the potential prevention of cyber compromises.
“The ETC is an extraordinary capability for our members,” explains Lee Watson, CEO of Forge Institute. “The cyber threat information provided by CISA helps equips our members with the information needed to better understand the adversary's tactics, techniques, and procedures and the resulting risk to their critical networks and systems.”
Through analyst-to-analyst sharing of threat and vulnerability information, the ETC, and our relationship with CISA through CISCP, helps our members better manage cybersecurity risks and enhances the collective ability to proactively detect, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents.
“CISCP enables actionable, relevant, and timely unclassified information exchange through trusted public-private partnerships across all critical infrastructure (CI) sectors,” according to CISA. In addition to CISCP, CISA has also provided access to its Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) program: “AIS is a real-time exchange of machine-readable cyber threat indicators and defensive measures that aids in cyber protection, and ultimately reduces the prevalence of cyber compromises.
These formal agreements provide additional cyber threat information to the ETC, already a unique center of its kind, and will be ingested into Forge Institute’s Cyber Threat Exchange platform powered by Splunk’s® TruStar®.
“Cyber threat information from the CISCP program and the feeds from the AIS program aid in the ETC’s illumination of cyber threats that could potentially impact our member’s cyber infrastructure” said Watson.”
The ETC is a next-generation, private-public “fusion cell” that provides members with access to a trusted community of security professionals tasked with securing and protecting critical infrastructure. Members gain access to cyber threat information, which includes information that’s received through Forge Institute’s CISCP relationship. The CISCP relationship enables Forge Institute to receive no-cost cyber threat information from a vetted community, specifically indicators of compromise provided by feeds that bolster the platform, including AIS and the CISCP feed.
“Most cyber information sharing and analysis centers are focused on a particular industry sector – financial or energy, for example,” said Watson. “The Forge Institute Emerging Threat Center is concerned with emerging threats against all sectors, giving our members and partners a wider view to the threats they may face.”
Membership to the Forge Institute Emerging Threat Center is open to vetted and approved private and public entities who protect critical infrastructure. To learn more or apply for membership, visit https://www.forge.institute/etc.
Key Facts
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) Program and Cyber Information Sharing and Collaboration Program (CISCP) provide access to cyber threat indicators of compromise (IOCs). Select institutions are granted access to these IOCs to aid in the prevention of cyber compromise.
AIS and CISCP provide volumes of data for patching and implementation by cyber teams and are available to members of Forge Institute's Emerging Threats Center (ETC).
Forge Institute’s ETC is a membership-based next-generation, private-public “fusion cell” that provides members with access to a trusted community of security professionals tasked with securing and protecting critical infrastructure in support of national defense.
About Forge Institute
As a critical member of the infosec community, Forge Institute provides a first, second and final line of cyber defense through innovative cyber-skills training, high-level resources offerings and strategic collaborations with the public and private sectors. Forge Institute’s portfolio includes the Emerging Threat Center, The Forge Academy, and Innovation Labs which explore industry and federally funded projects with our research partners. For more information, visit the Forge Institute at: https://www.forge.institute.
