§ The Earl of Northeskasked Her Majesty's Government:
In light of recent advice from the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC) about potential threats to key commercial information technology systems, what practical assistance they are offering to appropriate commercial interests to facilitate an effective response to the risk. [HL1850]
§ Lord Falconer of ThorotonCentral government assistance to those systems that are considered to be part of the critical national infrastructure is by way of the Unified Incident Reporting and Alert Scheme (UNIRAS I, which is part of the National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre (NISCC).
UNIRAS is the UK Government CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and receives reports of significant electronic attack incidents, threats, new vulnerabilities and countermeasures from its customer base and other commercial, government and international sources. It then validates, amends (where appropriate) and disseminates the information back to its customers through e-mail alerts and warnings. In addition, UNIRAS provides a helpdesk for its customers, giving advice on IT security incidents, particularly internet related problems; and collates reports of IT security incidents supplied by its customers and issues regular statistics. These reports are suitably amended to protect commercial or departmental sensitivies.