Community News

Kia Ora from the CSIRT Capacity Building event at APAN46, New Zealand, 5-9 August

“Kia Ora!”, welcomed a local Maori cultural group the participants of APAN46 Meeting/Conference at the opening reception in Auckland. From then on, this local greeting and expression of thanks became a prominent part of our time in New Zealand.

“Kia Ora!”, we were glad to greet 17 participants of CSIRT Capacity Building in Asia project, who came from 11 economies from the Asia-Pacific region. For many of them, coming to this far away country was not a straight-forward deal, which made it even more special to have a room full of dedicated R&E professionals.

Two days of the event were packed with learning and sharing activities – the participants attended not only the regular TRANSITS I modules (Organisational, Technical, Operational and Legal), but also an extra course on Risk Management and 2 CSIRT in Asia meetings, during which they were asked to share stories from their organisations or constituencies. Many of them were stories of challenges that still need to be overcome in order to have dedicated security positions or CSIRT teams at their organisations, but there were also stories of success. To mention just a few:

  • PERN (Pakistan) is in the process of establishing a CERT team in the next couple of months;
  • After attending TRANSITS at APAN45, the Universities Islam Indonesia created a CERT team and are working on reviving Indonesia ACAD-CSIRT;
  • BdREN (Bangladesh) and MYREN (Malaysia) are in the process of creating an NREN CERT;
  • LEARN (Sri Lanka) has organised a remote training session led by APNIC trainers for their constituents on the importance of CERT activities. This topic will now become a part of all NREN trainings.

The participants and trainers worked really hard morning till late and might have found the experience a bit overwhelming. But despite of that, TRANSITS I was awarded the Best Training Activity Award at the APAN46 Meeting/Conference. Huge thanks for that goes out to the volunteer trainers Melanie Rieback (Radically Open Security), Jamie Gillespie (APNIC), Nicole Harris (GÉANT) and Alf Moens (SURFnet) for their time and effort!

Through collaboration and with the help of the network of people in the region, all challenges can be overcome. Because in the end, it is all about the people.

He aha te mea nui o te ao
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

(Maori proverb)

The event at APAN46 was the second part of the CSIRT Capacity Building in Asia project, funded by Asi@Connect, supported by TEIN*CC and GÉANT. The next project training and meeting will take place at APAN47 in February 2019 in South Korea.

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