Stand By for Sirtfi: Third Annual InCommon Cybersecurity Cooperation Exercise Scheduled for November, Call for Participation Opens in August

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

By Kyle Lewis, Chair, Sirtfi Exercise Planning Working Group

Greetings fellow InCommoners! It will soon be time to assemble again, dust off our security response plans, and practice using Sirtfi in response to a distributed cyber attack against your universities. A simulated attack, that is, and by simulated, we mean a narrated story during a three-day, distributed tabletop exercise.

Practice What You Preach

As you probably know, use of the Sirtfi framework is part of InCommon’s Baseline Expectations for federation members. But it’s one thing to assert Sirtfi, and it’s another thing to practice in events that help your teams familiarize themselves with security response procedures in the federated environment. InCommon’s annual cybersecurity exercise is a chance to talk through procedures while communicating with security teams from other universities, and help you identify any gaps that need to be addressed to ensure that Sirtfi gets used in a real-world scenario.

Don’t Wait for a Crisis to Learn

Sirtfi is part of InCommon’s Baseline Expectations because we need to talk to each other when bad things happen. This year will be the third annual cybersecurity cooperation exercise. The exercise planning committee will send  a call for participation to the InCommon participants email list in late August. The exercise itself will be conducted the week of November 18-22. No travel required! Full details can be found on the SEPWG’s wiki.

Kyle Lewis is vice president of cybersecurity strategy at InCommon Catalyst RDCT.

About the SIRTFI Exercise Working Group

The SIRTFI Exercise Working Group prepares members of the InCommon Federation community to handle a federated security incident by conducting one or more tabletop exercises to simulate aspects of responding to the real thing. Exercises are aimed to be learning opportunities, increasing familiarity with and shared understanding of key concepts and practices in the SIRTFI framework. The SIRTFI Exercise Working Group is chartered by the InCommon Community Trust and Assurance Board. Additional information is available on the working group wiki.

ICYMI

• Bringing Identity and Security Together: InCommon’s 2023 Cybersecurity Cooperation Exercise