Coordination of IT security incidents
RCTS CERT is a computer security incident response service whose origin or target is RCTS.
In a more preventive component, RCTS CERT provides an alert service and produces recommendations regarding potential security risks and malicious activities.
One of the aims of this strand is to develop an internet safety culture.
Who is it intended for?
It is intended for the Institutions' Computer Support Centres:
- Higher Education
- Research and Development
- Non-profit Institutions whose main objective is Research and Development activities.
About RCTS CERT
The RCTS CERT contributes to the cybersecurity effort in the context of the RCTS user community, having obtained international recognition in its area of action.
In early 2011 it became a member of FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams) and achieved Trusted Introducer certification in 2015, becoming the first certified team nationally.
Since its creation until the end of 2014 the RCTS CERT used the name CERT.PT, gradually taking on a national, de facto, security incident response coordination mission.
After the creation of the National Cybersecurity Center, this entity assumed responsibility for the national incident response coordination component, and the unit's incident response team FCCN has since adopted the current name "RCTS CERT", reflecting its new scope of action.
What we do
In the prevention area RCTS CERT issues security alerts and produces recommendations regarding vulnerabilities, potential security risks and malicious activities.
Specifically, RCTS CERT features several sub-services available to the RCTS community:
- Incident handling: In a reactive manner, it analyses and distributes the information necessary to mitigate the problems that are presented to it, safeguarding the privacy of the individuals or entities involved in accordance with full compliance with the RGPD;
- Websiteaudits;
- Phishing Campaigns: Prepares, raises awareness and trains the institutions' employees to deal with situations of fraud through e-mail messages, simulating a phishing campaign and subsequently holding an awareness session.
- DNS Firewall: Protects RCTS users from communication with malicious nodes if that communication involves name resolution.
- Vulnerability management: Produces periodic automated reports regarding computer security vulnerabilities on a set of web services/servers.
Terms of Use
The RCTS CERT team focuses on coordinating incident response for the RCTS research and higher education communities. See more information about the service.