The National Cyber Security Partnership Task Force on Early Warning called for creation of an Early Warning Alert Network (EWAN) in order to cut across industry boundaries and disciplines and assure that appropriate people have the advanced information they need in order to prevent attacks, mitigate impacts and remediate systems. In addition, the task force called on the federal government to develop a National Crisis Coordination Center (NCCC) by 2006. The center would coordinate analysis, warning, response, training and R&D among critical infrastructure experts as well as representatives from federal, state and local government. The focus of the NCCC is on addressing priority remediation of systemic vulnerabilities in national level infrastructures, not just cyber security.
Early Warning Task Force Chairman Guy Copeland, vice president of Computer Sciences Corp., "Information sharing is a critical component of cyber-security. But as we analyzed the good work now being performed by government agencies and private-sector organizations, we did not see a mechanism that would foster exchange across industry boundaries and professional disciplines. We believe that EWAN will become the resource for trusted community-to-community communication. We look forward to working with the Department of Homeland Security and information sharing organizations to make EWAN and the NCCC a success."
The National Cyber Security Partnership represents a major private sector effort to harden America's critical information infrastructure through collaborative action. The effort began with the February 2003 publication of the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, and accelerated at the National Cyber Security Summit in December.
