CERT Coordination Center Overview

The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), arguably the most widely known group within the CERT Program, addresses risks at the software and system level. Although it was established as an incident response team, the CERT/CC has evolved beyond that, focusing instead on identifying and addressing existing and potential threats, notifying system administrators and other technical personnel of these threats, and coordinating with vendors and incident response teams world wide to address the threats.

Research Activities

• Vulnerability Remediation: By analyzing vulnerabilities, we hope to identify and mitigate issues before they become a significant security threat. Our vulnerability information comes from public sources and from reports sent directly to us. Once we identify a vulnerability, we work with the appropriate technology producers to resolve the issue.
  

• CSIRT Community: Internet threats are not confined to geographic borders. To promote a global response capability, we help organizations and countries establish computer security incident response teams (CSIRTs), and we work with existing teams to coordinate communication and response during major security events.
  

• Secure Coding: In addition to identifying current vulnerabilities, we want to prevent the introduction of new ones. We are establishing practices that vendors can use to improve the security and quality of their software.
  

• Artifact Analysis: Our artifact analysts examine, catalog, and sometimes reverse-engineer malicious code. These activities help us to better understand how the code works and allow us to identify trends and patterns that may reveal exploitable vulnerabilities or other potential threats.