Retailers are throwing their cyber-hats in with the financial services community when it comes to information-sharing, with the establishment of an intelligence-sharing portal that will link the two industries’ key players.
To make it happen, the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC) has launched the portal, which is managed by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC).
"The formalization of the sharing portal supported by the FS-ISAC is an important step in the evolution of retail cyber threat information sharing," said R-CISC executive director Brian Engle. "The R-CISC portal will substantially increase the efficacy of the information-sharing already underway by contextualizing, prioritizing and cataloging the information shared between retailers, other industries and law enforcement."
The relationship with FS-ISAC also paves the way for future collaborations, including use of Soltra Edge, the automated threat indicator sharing software platform used by financial companies.
The collaboration fits into an overall end goal of creating a federation of standards-based repositories at various critical infrastructure entities, including ISACs, CERTs, industry associations and many others that will act as hubs, creating trusted environments where member firms can securely share cyber threat intelligence. This is the vision laid out by President Obama in his last security-related Executive Order.
The launch of the Intelligence Sharing Portal is one of several tools that the R-CISC is developing, which will also encompass robust education and research offerings, it said.
"FS-ISAC is proud to support R-CISC as it delivers on its core mission of information-sharing and enabling retail organizations around the world [to] improve their cybersecurity posture and resilience," said Bill Nelson, FS-ISAC president and CEO. "FS-ISAC continually looks to innovate how information is shared, analyzed and disseminated. We believe there is tremendous potential both for intra-sector and cross-sector sharing and we look forward to sharing our expertise to help enable these new ways of collaborating."