Prague, August 3, 2015 - The National Security Team CSIRT.CZ, operated by the CZ.NIC Association, the Czech national domain administrator, became an official member of the international organization FIRST. It is the most important organization that brings together security teams from around the world. CSIRT.CZ became the first Czech security team operating in FIRST, and therefore the only representative of the Czech Republic in this major security organization. The CZ.NIC Association has operated the National Security Team CSIRT.CZ since 2011.

To obtain membership in the FIRST organization, CSIRT.CZ team members had to meet a set of demanding conditions and requirements. Their successful fulfillment was supervised by their teammates from the CERT POLSKA team, because compliance with all requirements must be personally verified by another independent member of the organization, which then submits a final report on the functioning and abilities of the team to FIRST.

“For our team, the membership in the FIRST organization has opened the door to new sources of information and exchange of know-how among the top teams from around the world, representing not just national organizations, but also companies, such as ICANN or a number of national CSIRT teams,” said Martin Peterka, Operations Director of CZ.NIC and the head of the National Security Team CSIRT.CZ.

About FIRST organization

FIRST (Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams) was founded in 1990. The FIRST organization consists of Internet security teams from more than 300 companies, government institutions, universities and other organizations from America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania. FIRST strives to solve incidents related to cyber security, supports cooperation between security teams and programs aimed at prevention and ensuring the development of security products, policies and services. More information about the FIRST organization is available at https://www.first.org/.

About the National Security Team CSIRT.CZ

Based on an agreement between the National Security Authority (formerly the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic) and the CZ.NIC association, from the beginning of January 2011 the administrator of the .CZ domain operates the National Security team CSIRT.CZ. It is a national team participating in resolving incidents related to cyber security in networks operating in the Czech Republic. CSIRT.CZ mainly provides assistance in coordination, as well as collects and analyzes data on reported incidents and sends that data to the staff responsible for operation of the network or service that was the source of the incident. More information about the National Security Team CSIRT.CZ and its activities can be found on the website https://www.csirt.cz/.