RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE CICTE CYBERSECURITY PRACTITIONERS’ WORKSHOP
ON THE OAS INTEGRAL CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY: FRAMEWORK FOR
ESTABLISHING THE INTER-AMERICAN CSIRT WATCH
AND WARNING NETWORK
I. OBJECTIVE
To create a hemisphere-wide network that will operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to be
made up of national contact points among Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) in
Member States of the OAS, with a mandate and the capacity to respond rapidly and in an appropriate
manner to crises, incidents and threats to computer security.
These teams could begin simply as official points of contact located in each State and charged
with receiving computer security information, to be transformed into CSIRTs in the future.
Since intruders now have more sophisticated means to launch highly automated attacks that
spread rapidly over the Internet, while at the same time employing methods intended to disguise and
make it difficult to understand or trace the origin of such attacks, worldwide cooperation and ability
of teams to respond in real time is of growing importance. Such cooperation must make it possible
to:
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Establish CSIRTs in each of the Member States;
Strengthen the Hemisphere’s CSIRTs;
Identify national points of contact in each State;
Identify those services deemed most critical;
Quickly detect and diagnose problems;
Establish protocols and procedures for the exchange of information;
Rapidly disseminate notice of such attacks throughout the region;
Provide rapid regional notice of general vulnerabilities in the system;
Provide regional warning of suspicious activities, and develop the cooperation
needed for analysis and diagnosis of such activities;
Provide information on measures for remedying or mitigating attacks and threats;
Reduce the amount of duplication in the analysis carried out by each team;
Strengthen technical cooperation and training in computer security aimed at
establishing national CSIRTs;
Make use of existing subregional mechanisms.
This cooperation will reinforce existing technical expertise among the teams so that they can
better limit the damage and ensure the continuing operation of critical services.
II. PRINCIPLES
1.
Indigenous – The hemispheric network should be operated and controlled by national points
of contact in each participating nation appointed by the governments.