Nokia joins industry heavies to fight security threats

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 23 September 2009 09:08

IT Industry - Strategy

Nokia has joined founding members Cisco, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks and Microsoft as a founding member of the 15 month old Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI).

"To effectively address multi-vendor security challenges wherever they strike, the world needs the commitment and cooperation of technology leaders like Nokia," said Linda Betz, president of ICASI. "Nokia brings a wealth of essential mobile telecommunications and global security expertise to ICASI as we work together to drive excellence and innovation in security response practices."

Janne Uusilehto, head of Nokia product security, added; "For many the mobile phone is an essential part of our everyday life. The next transformation will come when the mobile phone provides truly personalised and useful services that help you get the most out of life. For Nokia, security is an essential part of all phases of the mobile communications development process. Mobile security places various requirements globally on networks, platforms, servers, hardware, software, systems and procedures and Nokia is committed to continuously develop its products and services."

ICASI (www.icasi.org ) claims to give global information technology (IT) leaders a trusted forum to address international, multi-product security challenges, extending the ability of IT vendors to focus on complex security issues and better protect enterprises, governments, citizens and the critical IT infrastructures that support them. It was founded in June 2008.

Membership is open on three levels: founding, charter, and general. Founding and charter members must be nominated by an existing founding or charter member and must be global vendors, manufacturers or providers of IT that "can effect changes necessary to protect the global IT security ecosystem" and that are publicly traded companies listed on a US or a foreign exchange with a global customer base.

General membership is open to similar global companies but they do not have to be publicly listed, or be nominated. However they must be approved by the board. Nokia appears to be the only company to have joined at any level in the 15 months since the organisation's formation.

To date ICASI has launched two significant projects: The Unified Security Incident Response Plan enabling security incident response teams from ICASI member companies to collaborate quickly and effectively to resolve complex, multi-vendor Internet security issues; and the Common Frameworks for Vulnerability Disclosure and Response that aims to meld various similar pre-existing frameworks into a common framework that will "bring consolidation and consistency to the vulnerability reporting space."