SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- RSA
Conference 2017 – The Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) today
announced the appointment of Michael
Daniel as the organization's first president and its formal
incorporation as a not-for-profit entity. Additionally, founding
Members Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), Intel Security, Palo Alto
Networks (NYSE: PANW), and Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced
the addition of Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:
CHKP) and Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) as new alliance founding Members.
Together, the six founding Members have contributed to the
development of a new, automated threat intelligence sharing
platform to exchange actionable threat data, further driving the
CTA's mission of a coordinated effort against cyber
adversaries.
News Summary
- The CTA incorporated as a not-for-profit in January 2017 and appointed Michael Daniel as its first President in
February. Daniel was formerly Special Assistant to the President
and Cybersecurity Coordinator for the White House.
- The CTA has expanded to include Check Point Software
Technologies and Cisco as new founding Members who joined
pre-incorporation.
- The CTA's inaugural Board of Directors includes the CEOs and
senior leadership of six major cybersecurity vendors: Check Point,
Cisco, Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and
Symantec.
- The CTA outlines its corporate purpose as a not-for-profit: to
share threat information in order to improve defenses against cyber
adversaries across member organizations and protect customers; to
advance the cybersecurity of critical IT infrastructures; and to
increase the security, availability, integrity and efficiency of
information systems.
- The first CTA project as a standalone entity is the development
and rollout of a new, automated threat intelligence-sharing
platform that enables Members to integrate real-time, actionable
intelligence into their products to better protect global
customers.
- In addition to expanding its founding Members, the CTA has
added new affiliate Members, including IntSights, Rapid7 and RSA,
who join existing Members Eleven Paths and ReversingLabs.
CTA Formalizes as an Independent Not-for-Profit
Entity
Founded and actively sharing threat intelligence
since 2014, the CTA has evolved to an independent organization with
Michael Daniel as its President and
a Board of Directors comprised of its six founding Members, Check
Point, Cisco, Fortinet, Intel Security, Palo Alto Networks and
Symantec. Daniel brings extensive expertise to the CTA in
developing strategic cyber partnerships and programs that span the
private and public sector, as well as other nations to build the
most effective security solutions. The CTA's move to an
incorporated entity signifies the commitment by industry leaders to
work together to determine the most effective methods for sharing
automated, rich threat data and to make united progress in the
fight against sophisticated cyber attacks.
Since inception, the CTA has regularly exchanged information on
botnets, mobile threats and indicators of compromise (IoCs) related
to advanced persistent threats (APTs), and advanced malware
samples. Notable milestones of the CTA's cooperative efforts
cracked the code on CryptoWall version 3, one of the most lucrative
ransomware families in the world, totaling more than US
$325 million ransomed. The CTA's
research and findings pushed cybercriminals to develop CryptoWall
version 4, which the CTA also uncovered and resulted in a much less
successful attack, validating the power of the CTA's cooperative
threat intelligence sharing.
These coordinated efforts demonstrate that all Members of the
CTA believe in protecting the common good of the Internet by
sharing intelligence to combat sophisticated global cyberattacks.
By bringing together industry competitors contributing their unique
threat insights, the CTA builds a comprehensive view of important
threat actors. With enriched understanding and enhanced protections
against global attacks, members can better protect customers in
real time and prioritize resources based on collective
knowledge.
Information Sharing Platform Automates Collaboration on
Contextual Threat Intelligence
With co-development from its
six founding Members over the past year, the new CTA platform
automates information sharing in near real-time to solve the
problems of isolated and manual approaches to threat intelligence.
The platform better organizes and structures threat information
into Adversary Playbooks, pulling everything related to a specific
attack campaign together in one place to increase the contextual
value, quality and usability of the data. This innovative approach
turns abstract threat intelligence into actionable real-world
protections, enabling Members to speed up information analysis and
deployment of the intelligence into their respective products.
To foster continued collaboration and incentivize meaningful
threat data, the new CTA platform requires Members to automate
their intelligence sharing contributions, meet a minimum
contribution every day, and rewards contextualized, unique
intelligence. Members will eventually be rewarded with greater
levels of access based on the value and volume of the information
they have contributed.
In addition to its core mission of coordinated information
sharing, the CTA is also the first industry trade association
designed by and exclusively for cybersecurity practitioners.
Representing the collective voice of industry leaders, the CTA is
committed to help shape industry best practices and continue to
ensure that the most effective security is being delivered for
individual customers and organizations around the world.
Supporting Quotes
"The future of cyber security is here. The CTA collaboration
will enable us to accelerate the pace of innovation as we work to
protect the cloud, mobile and provide the best means for advanced
threat prevention."
Gil Shwed, founder and CEO,
Check Point
"The CTA lets us better take the fight to the bad guys for the
common good of the internet. Working together, we complete the
bigger picture of what we know about important attacks giving us
better protections against both large, global attackers and even
more discrete, targeted threats. The CTA is a win for the
good guys and a setback for attackers."
Marty Roesch, chief architect,
Cisco Security
"As a founding Member of the Cyber Threat Alliance, we strongly
believe in this next level of commitment to help deliver automated,
comprehensive threat intelligence to our global customers and all
organizations. The CTA becoming a standalone organization signifies
that the cybersecurity industry holds a collective responsibility
to work together to prevent advanced, global cyber attacks by
sharing meaningful threat findings. The best way to combat the
negative impact of cybercriminals and best protect our customers is
through cooperation and partnership based on actionable
intelligence from diverse sources."
Ken Xie, founder, chairman of
the board and CEO, Fortinet
"We believe there is power in working together, as people, as
products and as an industry. For the last three years, we have
worked shoulder-to-shoulder with our Cyber Threat Alliance founding
Members to share threat intelligence, build context around advanced
threats, and provide our customers the benefits of our collective
knowledge. This ongoing effort will help Intel Security customers
build defenses that understand and counter complex attacks more
quickly and effectively, throughout all stages of the threat
defense lifecycle."
Chris Young, SVP and GM, Intel
Security Group, Intel Corporation
"As a founding Cyber Threat Alliance member since 2014 and
consistent driver for automated threat intelligence sharing, Palo
Alto Networks is pleased at the continued forward momentum toward
collectively improving the industry's defenses against advanced
cyber adversaries. Our mission is to maintain trust in today's
digital world, and the collective intelligence from the Cyber
Threat Alliance eco-system furthers our ability to enable our
customers to successfully prevent cyber breaches."
Mark McLaughlin, chairman and
CEO at Palo Alto Networks
"Our greatest weapon in the defense against cyber attackers is
the vast power of our combined data and insights. Possessing one of
the world's largest pools of threat data carries significant
responsibility, and the CTA provides us with an important
coordinating mechanism to enable rapid sharing of that threat
intelligence with global businesses. In today's hyper-connected
world, a single piece of malware could cripple global economies or
even put lives in danger. The technology investments we're making
as members of the alliance aims to strengthen the protection of
people everywhere."
Greg Clark, CEO
Symantec
About the Cyber Threat Alliance
Co-founded by Check
Point ® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), Cisco (NASDAQ:
CSCO), Fortinet ® (NASDAQ: FTNT), Intel Security (formerly McAfee),
Palo Alto Networks® (NYSE: PANW) and Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), the
Cyber Threat Alliance is the industry's first group of
cybersecurity practitioners from organizations that work together
in good faith to share threat information and improve global
defenses against advanced cyber adversaries. The mission of the
Cyber Threat Alliance is to raise the industry's collective,
actionable intelligence and situational awareness about
sophisticated cyberthreats to improve defenses for its respective
customer organizations. For more information about the Cyber Threat
Alliance, please visit: http://cyberthreatalliance.org/.
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SOURCE Cyber Threat Alliance