NATO and FireEye announce cyber information sharing agreement

FireEye, Inc. and the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency announced an Industry Partnership Agreement (IPA) on December 16 for cyber security information sharing, which is another progressive step forward in strengthening NATO networks and systems and FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence.

The agreement will foster timely information sharing on cyber threats discovered by FireEye and NATO, allowing both parties to enhance situational awareness and better protect their networks and customers. In practice, the IPA will facilitate the rapid and early bilateral exchange of non-classified technical information related to cyber threats and vulnerabilities. In addition, for NATO, FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence will be integrated into NCI Agency 24/7 detection and prevention processes, thereby enhancing further NATO’s cyber security posture.

FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence combines high-fidelity machine, victim, and adversary intelligence that enables proactive security-based practices. NATO will have access to a set of FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence technical indicators, or IoC’s (Indicators of Compromise), that will enhance existing systems and speed up responses to potential security threats. To ensure the privacy of FireEye and NATO data, only generic, non-attributable data will be shared between the two organizations.

“If we are going to move faster than the cyber threats we face, then it is absolutely imperative that we exchange timely and actionable threat information with industry,” said Maj. Gen. (ret) Koen Gijsbers, general manager of the NCI Agency. “Our existing IPAs have already shown impressive results that are making a real difference to NCI Agency and our industry partners. FireEye’s depth of expertise from responding to many of the largest cyber breaches in the world will be very valuable to the IPA framework, and we look forward to a productive partnership.”

“Public and private sector organizations face the same challenges of managing a large number of low-fidelity data and alerts from traditional security offerings like next generation firewalls, endpoint, and intrusion prevention systems — masking real threats and slowing responses to threats,” said Tony Cole, VP and global government CTO, FireEye. “In forming an information sharing partnership with NATO, we gain additional data for FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence that will further protect our customers, and at the same time, FireEye will help provide critical intelligence that will help enable better threat detection, greater visibility to potential cyber-threats and faster responses to such potential cyber-threats to the NATO’s networks and systems.”

Source: FireEye