WASHINGTON–The National Credit Union Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (NCU-ISAO) has announced what it is calling a “mission to advance credit union cyber resilience, real-time security situational awareness information sharing, and coordinated response in the global credit union community.”
The NCU-ISAO has been founded by two credit unions, BCU and Founders Federal. It reports it is a member of the International Association of Certified ISAOs (IACI), and says it leverages a private sector-led global cyber threat intelligence infrastructure working in collaboration with government (U.S. DHS, etc.), headquartered at the Global Institute for Cybersecurity & Research (GICSR) Global Situational Awareness Center at NASA/Kennedy Space Center. IACI said it advances cyber information sharing through guidance, operations and technologies for ISAOs worldwide to share information, coordinate response, provide mutual assistance and benefit from economies of scale.
"This is the first operational and threat intelligence sharing organization dedicated wholly to credit unions,” said Gene Fredriksen, executive director of the NCU-ISAO. “Just as credit unions exist to serve the needs of their communities, the NCU-ISAO exists to serve credit unions’ needs in the cybersecurity space. Because the information sharing needs for credit unions encompass more than just cyber threats, the NCU-ISAO will support innovative, member driven initiatives around benchmarking, process improvement, and regulatory strategies."
According to the NCU-ISAO, protecting the credit union’s global infrastructure to sustain cyber resilience requires an unprecedented level of public- and private-sector cooperation, collaboration and coordination and includes access to the real-time availability of proactive “actionable” threat intelligence; analysis of potential impacts; coordinated countermeasure solutions and response; cybersecurity best practice adoption and role-based workforce education.
“In cybersecurity resiliency we need to continuously up our game—the hackers certainly are,” said Jeff Johnson, CIO, BCU, in a statement. “To optimize our defenses, we need to know what to do and when—but the constantly changing threat landscape creates something akin to a dynamically changing jigsaw puzzle. Having a credit union collaborative entity gathering data from across the entire threat landscape will help us make better decisions on where we focus our investments and thus our resiliency.”
As an integral cyber resilience nexus and communication channel, the NCU-ISAO represents a collaborative, member-driven independent non-profit organization that enables credit unions to participate in a globally trusted community that enhances security protection efforts. The NCU-ISAO said it is the first information sharing organization created exclusively to address threats and operational intelligence issues that are unique to credit unions.
The NCU-ISAO said it will provide services that help credit unions of all sizes accelerate the maturity of their cyber security and compliance programs, including:
- Identify credit union-specific cybersecurity risks; define risk-reducing cost-effective mitigation strategies, metrics, effective controls, sector differentiation, forecasting, trending, modeling, comparison to peers and best practice adoption
- Detect, aggregate, analyze, prioritize and share threat and vulnerability intelligence
- Provide information, intelligence and benchmarking information related to NCUA, FFIEC, PCI and other related regulatory guidance, including the effective use of self-assessment tools
- Advance credit union access to manual or automated real-time security situational awareness; threat intelligence information sharing of cyber threat indicators; incidents, observables, threat actors, tactics/techniques/procedures, exploit targets and campaigns
“This is our time to act once and affect many,” said Bob Bender, chief technology officer, Founders Federal Credit Union, in a statement. “The amount of information flooding our Cyber Resilience Program today is overwhelming. We have an opportunity to quiet the noise and safeguard the Personal Identifiable Information our members entrust us with today. I am excited to be part of such a diverse and talented team working together to bring a disruption to the cybersecurity insecurity we battle every day of our careers. This is what credit unions helping credit unions is all about.”
For info: http://www.ncuisao.org