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July 26, 2011—Under the auspices of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the SEI has undertaken a year-long project to help the Albanian government stand up a national incident management capability. Drawing on its experience in the areas of organizational resilience and incident management, the SEI will work with the Albanian government to promote the adoption and sustainment of best practices in cybersecurity and to foster understanding of these practices among organizations and institutions providing eGovernment services. The effort intends to help the Albanian government develop the capabilities necessary for meeting its cybersecurity goals in a climate of serious and ever-changing threats.

According to the agreement, the SEI will deliver a combined program of assessment, collaborative planning, training, facilitated workshops, and technical guidance. “The primary goal is to create a computer security incident response team (CSIRT) for the government of Albania,” said John Haller, member of the technical staff in the SEI’s CERT® Program. “This organization will work to protect a limited number of systems of importance to the Albanian government, and also serve as a national point of contact and coordinating center for computer security incidents involving Albania.” Haller and other representatives from CERT provided an initial round of consultation and training that began on June 13.

Haller noted the second goal of the engagement is to help the Albanian government institutionalize and sustain best practices for security across its government infrastructure. To begin to address this need, CERT provided an introduction to the CERT® Resilience Management Model (CERT®-RMM). “The value of the RMM here is that it provides a structured way to help build and sustain best practices across a community,” said Haller, “in this case, government agencies in Albania standing up and operating eGovernment services on the web. Additionally RMM can help build their understanding about how to manage the resiliency of these services.”

During future visits to Albania, CERT will help with the planning and development of the national incident response capability and provide customized technical training workshops. Albania’s stated goal is “the creation of a safe environment for communication between citizens and public services.” Haller believes the expertise CERT possesses in the areas of resilience and incident management can help the government of Albania meet its objectives.

For more information about resilience management and the CERT-RMM, please visit http://www.cert.org/resilience/.

For more information about the work CERT has undertaken to support CSIRTs with national responsibility, please visit http://www.cert.org/csirts/national/.