Infrastructures and Security News IT Security: Government - Microsoft Memorandum of Understanding IT Security: Government - Microsoft Memorandum of Understanding
- 19/06/2006The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) and the FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation (site in Portuguese) will sign a cooperation agreement with Microsoft on Wednesday (21st July) on I.T: security which puts into practice the Memorandum of Understanding signed by the Government and the American I.T. company in February.
The signature ceremony for the agreement, which shall come into force immediately, shall take place at approximately 11am at the UMIC premises (Inovação I Building at Taguspark - Oeiras).
Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will send UMIC and FCCN monthly information on virus and security problems, among others, for common users of Windows, Internet Explorer and other software.
UMIC will make this information available to the Central Government IT services as part of its coordinating duties for the Information Society, thereby helping to reinforce public services’ IT security.
UMIC and FCCN shall in turn send Microsoft information on the volume and distribution of security incidents detected under the scheme, as well as alerts and information on security incidents produced by the FCCN’s CSIRT - Computer Security Incident Response Team (http://www.cert.pt/ (site in Portuguese)) and CSIRTs operating in the scope of the Central Government.
The agreement also provides for coordination of the response of bodies involved in incidents deemed emergencies for IT security, including Microsoft’s provision of information on how to combat them.
In this way, as far as Microsoft applications are concerned, the security conditions have been improved for the RCTS – Science Technology and Society Network, which provides Internet connections for scientific institutions and polytechnic institutes, universities and primary and secondary schools and is managed by the FCCN, as well as the Central Government’s IT security.
The FCCN’s CERT.PT (site in Portuguese) is currently the only Computer Security Incident Response Team in Portugal with international accreditation. It is part of a range of institutions where a prominent role is played by the CERT Coordination Centre - CERT - Computer Emergency Response Teams of Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
CERT.PT (site in Portuguese) operates in the scope of the RCTS and has already dealt with more than 600 IT security incidents, for example those created by viruses, spyware and other forms of IT intrusion.