Community and Capacity Building Initiatives
Working together to improve global incident response
Community and Capacity Building initiatives are distinct work programs designed to help grow, strengthen, and expand global incident response. Delivered as standalone programs or through ongoing partnerships, these initiatives leverage the expertise and experience of the FIRST community to help incident responders around the world deliver on their goals, priorities, and ambitions.
Toastville TTX Women International Security Cyberspace Fellowship 2024
Collaboration with CERT VU - Vanuatu
IGF BPF Cybersecurity 2023
Asia-Pacific Incident Response Fellowship 2024
Asia-Pacific Incident Response Fellowship 2024
Africa Regional Liaison Workshop with CSA 2024 - Ghana
Africa Regional Liaison Training with gmCSIRT 2025 - Gambia
Africa Regional Liaison presentation with MwCERT 2025 - Malawi
A4 Engagement with CIRT-BS 2025 - Bahamas
A4 Comms Training - Bahamas
CSIRT Americas Week Training 2024 - Chile
CSIRT Americas Week Training 2024 - Costa Rica
CSIRT Americas Week Training 2024 - Dominica
Toastville TTX 2022 - Fiji
SIM3 Training at FIRST-PaCSON Regional Symposium 2023 - Vanuatu
Policy Engagement at the UN OEWG 2025
ITU Cyber Drill Bahamas 2024
Incident Response Workshop at P4C - Fiji
FIRST TC at APNIC 58 2024 - New Zealand
FIRST AJCCBC Remote Training Series 2024
Cyber Drill at FIRST-PaCSON Regional Symposium 2023 - Vanuatu
A4 Collaboration-TT CSIRT2025 - Trinidad and Tobago
A selection of FIRST CCB Initiatives are highlighted below.
FIRST Africa Regional Liaison (ARL) Initiative
2023 to Present
The FIRST ARL Initiative enables two liaisons to support national CSIRT/CERT development, ecosystem wide community and capacity building, and regional information sharing networks across Africa.
At the natCSIRT level, the liaisons provide direct mentorship and advisory support, facilitate the sharing of lessons learned and good practice from the global incident response community, and support capacity building activities.
At the national level, the liaisons connect with practitioners across local stakeholder groups to deliver training, support incident response capability development, and foster local communities of practice.
At the regional level, the liaisons work to develop formal and informal regional trust groups for information sharing, activity coordination, and capacity building delivery for national teams and the wider African cybersecurity ecosystem.
The current ARL initiative runs from 2023 to 2026 and has been made possible through the generous support of UK International Development as part of the Africa Cyber Programme.
Actioning Alerts and Advisories (A4)
2024 to Present
Information sharing isn’t just about the data and threat intel. To make it impactful, you need to be able to access it, process it, and communicate it across all sorts of stakeholders. A4 is a partnership between FIRST and natCSIRTs, identifying sources of locally relevant threat data, then processing those feeds into relevant insights that can be clearly communicated as usable advice to each team’s diverse constituents.
FIRST technical and communications SMEs work side-by-side with teams to understand the work of each team, provide informal mentorship and advisory support for team initiatives, and, at the discretion and guidance of the local partner, meet with key stakeholders, and deliver a community training workshop with selected participants
The current iteration of A4 focuses on the four priority countries of The Bahamas, Cameroon, Malawi, and Trinidad and Tobago. Running from 2024 to 2025, this program is funded by the UK Government.
Toastville TTX
2023 to Present
FIRST regularly engages with the policy community to help build awareness, understanding, and collaborations for more informed policy making and to foster of an enabling environment for incident responders. As part of this engagement FIRST has developed the Toastville Table Top Exercise (TTX) series to help policy makers grapple with the complexities and interdependencies involved in various incident response scenarios.
The first Toastville TTX was delivered as part of the March 2023 USAID Workshop on National Cybersecurity Strategies and Regional Cooperation in Preparedness & Response held in Nadi, Fiji.
Since then, FIRST has worked with the Global Forum on Cyber Expertise and UNITAR (UN Institute for Training and Research) to deliver Toastville TTXs for the Women in International Security and Cyberspace (WIC) Fellowship ahead of the December 2024 and February 2025 UN OEWG (Open-Ended Working Group on the Security of and in the Use of Information and Communications Technologies).
FIRST AJCCBC Workshop Series
2024 to Present
The FIRST – AJCCBC Workshop Series is a collaboration between FIRST and the ASEAN-Japan Cybersecurity Capacity Building Centre (AJCCBC) located in Bangkok, Thailand. Through this collaboration, FIRST has provided training and capture-the-flag (CTF) challenges to participants from across Southeast Asia.
The first iteration of the project was funded by the Swiss Confederation and included the delivery of four remote workshops by FIRST community trainers. The topics covered included SIM 3, Jupyter Notebook in Incident Response, and two CTF challenges.
CSIRT Americas Collaboration
2024 to Present
Since 2024, FIRST has enhanced its collaboration with the Organization of American States (OAS) and its CSIRT Americas program. Through this collaboration, FIRST has supported trainings and capacity building at the OAS Cybersecurity Boot Camp and during the CSIRT Americas Weeks in Costa Rica, Chile, Paraguay and Dominica.
Asia-Pacific Incident Response Fellowship (APAC IRF)
2024
The APAC IRF is a regional fellowship opportunity to support increased engagement and diversity in the Asia-Pacific incident response community. The fellowship supports selected participants to join the FIRST Asia-Pacific Regional Symposium to engage with each other, learn from leading incident response experts, mentors, and regional peers, and participate in training opportunities.
The inaugural fellowship in 2024 was supported by the APNIC Foundation and enabled nine multistakeholder cybersecurity community leaders from nine regional economies to join the APERT-FIRST Asia-Pacific Regional Symposium held in Taipei, Taiwan from 7 to 8 November 2024.
ITU Cyber Drills and Women in Cyber
2015 to Present
FIRST and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have had a strong partnership to support the delivery of ITU Global and Regional Cyber Drills since 2015 and the Women in Cyber Mentorship Program between 2021 and 2022.
In that time, FIRST Community Trainers have delivered trainings and drills across 20+ ITU regional and global drill events and supported four remote trainings and keynotes for the ITU-FIRST-EQUALS Women in Cyber Mentorship Program.
Collaborative Fellowships
2019 to Present
In addition to the Suguru Yamaguchi Fellowship program, FIRST collaborates with a number of global partners to bring additional fellowship communities to the FIRST Annual Conferences. This collaboration helps introduce new participants to the global incident response community, build capacity and networks across underrepresented regions, and contributes to the diversity of perspectives and ideas within the FIRST community.
These partnerships have included global fellowship collaboration with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), PaCSON, eGA, GIZ, and The UK Home Office.
Regional collaborations with the Council of Europe, e-Governance Academy, Organization of American States (OAS), the FIRST Africa Regional Liaison Initiative, APNIC Foundation, and others have also been supported to facilitate participation at various FIRST Regional Symposiums across the globe.
2018 to Present
In 2018, the Geneva-based DCAF launched the "Enhancing Cybersecurity Governance in the Western Balkans" project. Initially focused on CSIRT collaboration, the program now brings together private and public CSIRTs and helps build cyber diplomacy capacity in the WB region. FIRST has been instrumental in the program since its inception, providing technical expertise and a long history of community building. Since 2022, FIRST and DCAF have been organizing the annual Balkan Cyber Security Days, which regularly brings together members of the public and private sectors to discuss policy and technical issues, followed by two days of training.
Protecting the International Geneva
2024 to Present
Geneva is home to 42 international organizations and hundreds of humanitarian NGOs. This unique community of diverse organizations is crucial to peace and stability, and therefore an attractive target for cyber-attacks. Together with ICT4Peace, FIRST is delivering training courses that help build a cybersecurity community and promote defensive skills as part of a Swiss government program to help members of the international Geneva community to better protect themselves.
2022 to Present
Conflicts abound, even in cyberspace. Supporting HD Centre's Digital Directorate, FIRST helps conflicting parties find ways to de-escalate conflicts. FIRST's experts help build bridges between the technical and diplomatic communities. Conducting of scenario-based exercises to help participating states find ways to improve communication.
FIRST Regional Symposium for the Pacific
2019 and 2023
Effective digital resilience and incident response is dependent on a strong network of capable partners and practitioners across government, the private sector, and civil society both locally and across international partners. The development of these networks in the Pacific can be enabled through convening efforts to build trust and develop capacity. The FIRST Regional Symposium for the Pacific Initiative was designed to help build awareness and capacity across these stakeholder groups and, more importantly, build formal and informal connections between these communities.
The inaugural FIRST Regional Symposium for the Pacific was held in 2019 in partnership with Global Partners Digital (GPD) and with support from the Australian Government. The subsequent event in 2023 was held alongside the PaCSON (Pacific Cyber Security Operational Network) Annual General Meeting in Port Vila Vanuatu with support from PaCSON, the Government of Vanuatu, OGCIO (Office of the Government CIO), CERT VU, The U.S. State Department, and APNIC Foundation. Both Regional Symposiums included fellowships and a strong training component to enable greatest engagement and impact from across the region.
FIRST CCB is enabled by the generous support of our FIRST CORE Supported, initiative sponsors, and the tireless work of the FIRST community.
