TruSecure Guards Florida Infrastructure

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) chose TruSecure, Herndon, Va., to provide it with security intelligence and alerts on emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

TruSecure also provides training for the Florida Infrastructure Protection Center (FIPC), an FDLE division focused on cybersecurity and created about a year ago, and the statewide Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT). Members of the CIRT are IT professionals from various state agencies who are on call to respond to critical security incidents.

TruSecure's intelligence and alerting services not only help alert the FDLE to new cyberthreats but also help the FIPC warn Florida businesses about new security risks, said Bob Breeden, supervisory special agent for the FDLE's computer crime division.

A component of the FIPC is an education and awareness campaign called Secure Florida. The FIPC uses TruSecure's automated alerting service to post alerts on the Secure Florida Web site and inform registered users of the site.

The FIPC's educational campaign and TruSecure's alerts are critical to helping Florida companies protect themselves from Internet threats, Breeden said. "Florida has a lot of small businesses, many with 20 or fewer employees," he said. "They don't have a huge IT staff protecting their data."

Also, TruSecure's alerts help the FDLE deal with security vulnerabilities before they become problems, Breeden said.

TruSecure's intelligence services are based on research and on knowledge gleaned from the firm's ISCA Labs division, which tests and certifies security products, said Bill Harrod, TruSecure's director of investigative responses.

"We're watching ... the emerging vulnerabilities that are being discussed both aboveground and underground and taking that information in conjunction with what we know about information security products," Harrod said.

The information is put together in a way that provides the FDLE with data on what typical corporations might be facing in the way of cyberthreats, he said.

TruSecure, for example, provided early warning of the recent critical flaw in Cisco Systems' operating software that makes most of its routers vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack. The alert, which was passed through the Secure Florida portal, also provided mitigation measures that administrators could implement to protect their networks before applying the Cisco patch, Harrod said.

The entire Florida CIRT team, along with FDLE staffers, visited ISCA Labs to see firsthand how the labs test and certify products. "We also provide some tools and training for how they would be able to kick off an incident response and how to do some triage," Harrod said.

TruSecure also provides ongoing training via an information-sharing and-analysis portal. There, members of the FIPC can post questions for TruSecure researchers about alerts or other security issues.

The portal provides a significant amount of discussion, which can be viewed by the FIPC members who have access to it, Harrod said. "It becomes a mechanism for building community relationships and distributing greater intelligence in the FIPC."

In addition, TruSecure helped the FDLE develop some of the curriculum for the FIPC, which evolved from a 1998 presidential directive on protection of the nation's critical infrastructures, Harrod said.