Re: SIRCE to be awarded to DANTE and UKERNA

[John Martin <]

TAG,

Is this OK?

John

--

Dear NCC Contributers,

At 8:21 AM +0000 07/01/97, Mats Brunell wrote:
>I presume it will be fully paid for by the CEC?!

No.

>If so, I would guess this will put things back to sqare
>one as for long term funding is concerned.
>Are the commercial IP service providers at all involved?

I think there is some serious confusion over the TERENA SIRCE initiative so
I will take this opportunity to explain it in more detail. (This is mostly
extracted from reports sent to fsig-europe@localhost and
cerie@localhost.)

The background: In 1995, TERENA set up a task force named "CERTs in Europe"
to produce a report[1] on the requirements for the possible formation of a
European "CERT Coordination Centre". TERENA accepted its final report and
put out a call for proposals, but it was felt by members of the task force
that the CfP did not match the paper they had produced and so in
consultation with the CERT community, TERENA decided on a plan with the
following stages:

	* The creation of a Technical Advisory Group (TAG), consisting a few
	key members of the European CERT community, who had the trust of the
	larger community, and whose guidance would be vital to TERENA on
	decisions regarding the creation of the pilot project.

	* The instigation of a pilot project which would start with 1 x FTE
	offering Incident Support (IS), growing to 3 x FTE within 2 years and
	migrating towards offering Basic Incident Coordination (BIC) in the
	first year. [See the TF report for detailed definitions of IS and BIC]

	* Once the pilot project is started, the TAG will be disbanded and a
	new body, representing those organisations funding the pilot project,
	will be created.

	* The creation of a call for proposals for a European "CERT
	Coordination Centre", during the final phases of the pilot project.
	This service would take over after the successful completion of the
	pilot service.

The initiative was given the title SIRCE: Security Incident Response
Coordination for Europe.

TERENA issued a closed call for tender for the operation of the pilot
phase. The TAG evaluated the results and produced a recommendation to the
TERENA Executive. As you know, the result was that TERENA has decided that
the pilot will be operated by a consortium consisting of UKERNA
(JANET-CERT) and DANTE.

Initially, TERENA is requesting contributions from existing large CERTs in
order to get the pilot off the ground. By its very nature, the pilot phase
will have a smaller constituency but the operators of the pilot will be
expected to expand this during the pilot phase.

The eventual SIRCE service will be paid for entirely by its customers in
the long run. (You will recall that this is almost exactly how the RIPE NCC
was formed.)

If you have any queries about SIRCE, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

John Martin, Secretary, TERENA CERT Technical Advisory Group