FIRST welcomes new CERTs from Qatar and Gulf States

WASHINGTON – LONDON – TOKYO – June 27, 2006. In what was described as "a huge step forward" for the safety of Internet communications in the Middle East, the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) today [Tuesday June 27] welcomed delegates from newly established emergency teams in Qatar and the Gulf States to its annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland.

And members of the FIRST Steering Committee today agreed to hold a technical colloquium – their periodic update on solutions to the latest worldwide Internet threats and vulnerabilities – next Spring in Qatar.

Q-CERT, the new national internet emergency response team for Qatar, was founded under the aegis of FIRST in January, and just two weeks ago GCC-CERT came into existence: the Gulf Co-ordination Council, which aims to supervise the establishment of national response teams in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

"The creation of Q-CERT and GCC-CERT is a huge step forward for us", said FIRST founder-member Jeffrey Carpenter, of the CERT Co-ordination Centre at Carnegie Mellon University, who introduced the new delegates.

"Piece by piece we’re completing the international jigsaw of emergency coverage, and these two new teams represent a substantial advance."

More about the FIRST Baltimore Conference at
www.first.org/conference/2006

More about FIRST at
http://www.first.org&http://www.first.org/about

FIRST hosts a Global Security News Feed at
http://www.first.org/newsroom/globalsecurity