The Organisation of Islamic Conference — Computer Emergency Response Team(OIC-CERT): Answering cross border cooperation

The rapid growth of the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) systems and network infrastructures have cause the Internet to be borderless and inevitably given rise to the issues in mitigating cross border cyber crimes. Realizing the danger and the huge impact of this matter, the Computer Security and Incident Response Teams (CSIRT) or the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) have developed international and regional collaborations to deal with cross borders cyber threats. Sharing intelligence, research, best practice, challenges and learning from other´s mistakes as well as helping to formulate and drive international policy direction and initiatives will help member countries to protect their own critical information infrastructure. Acknowledging this new trend of collaboration and the threats in the cyber world, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) has agreed to the establishment of inter CSIRT/CERT collaboration among its member countries. The OIC - CERT was established in 2009 with the status of an affiliated institution to the OIC. Presently, 18 OIC countries are members of this collaboration and various activities are being conducted with the main objective being to facilitate the development of CIRST capabilities, information sharing on views and issues in cyber security. From the economic perspective, information security is currently considered as one of the factors to lure foreign investment to a country. Thus strengthening the nation´s information security will help improve international recognition.