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Pop-up Kiwi CERT a shepherd for helpless hacked SMB flock

Natsec, schools covered, but what about the middle, boffins bleat.

New Zealand will get its first national computer security incident response team (CSIRT) helping to assist underserved hacked small businesses, should a funding effort be successful.

If the money rains, at least two professional security consultants and possibly some graduate students will work over a year to assess what is said to be a woeful state of incident response for the nation's medium businesses.

New Zealand Internet Task Force chair Barry Brailey says popped organisations seating up to 200 staff could ring the CSIRT and receive free assistance.

"There is some response capability at the [Government's] national cyber security centre but they are focused on critical infrastructure, and some help at the schools level … everyone in between are left to their own devices," Brailey told Vulture South.

"Up 70 percent of attacks are said to be targeting those companies but we don't know the precise size and scale of the problem, so we are proposing a proof-of-concept CSIRT to help us get out there and deal with this."

The proof-of-concept will be funded through corporate donations which are actively sought. A tip of NZ$10,000 gets a corporation pegged as a silver partner, NZ$25,000 gets gold, and NZ$50,000 will make a company a platinum partner.

New Zealand's ASB Bank has signed on as the first platinum sponsor and local eBay analog Trade Me has committed as a silver member.

The would-be CSIRT, or computer emergency response team, will cut down on management overheads and operate as trim and agile.

Brailey says he and CSIRT members are keeping the government in the loop in a bid to help stimulate interest for an official and permanent computer emergency response team. ®

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