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CERT head

by Mark Rowe

Chris Gibson has become director of the UK’s national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UK).

He took up his post on 11 November; what the Cabinet Office terms ‘initial operational capability’ is planned for early next year. He was the director of e-crime at Citigroup, and has been for nine years on the leadership team of the international Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST), with the last two as global chair. He is a member of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) Cyber Advisory Panel and for ten years was one of Citigroup’s representatives to the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure’s Financial Service’s Information Exchange.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said: “Chris Gibson brings with him a wealth of experience in cyber incident response in the private sector, both in the UK and internationally. His first-hand knowledge and understanding of cyber security will be invaluable as he leads the national CERT. We set out in our national Cyber Security Strategy the importance of strengthening our response to cyber incidents. By establishing CERT-UK we will build on and complement our existing CERT structures. This will help improve national co-ordination of cyber incidents and act as a focus point for international sharing of technical information on cyber security. CERT-UK will be the expert single point of contact for other national CERTs around the globe.”

According to the Government setting up of a national CERT followed ‘lessons learned’ from the Olympic Games in 2012. The Government makes the point that cyber attacks are a real and growing threat to UK interests and billions of pounds are lost to the UK economy each year – industry being by far the biggest victim.

Chris Gibson said: “I am delighted to join CERT-UK as we enter this exciting phase, with implementation underway and the leadership team now being appointed I am looking forward to the task of bringing together government, industry, law enforcement and academia to establish the CERT as a team of professionals forming a world-class response to cyber threats to the UK.”

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