More vendors join Cyber Threat Alliance in effort to combat advanced cyber threats

Fortinet, McAfee Labs, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec, co-founders of the industry’s first cyber threat alliance, announced that Barracuda Networks, Inc., ReversingLabs, Telefónica, and Zscaler have joined the Cyber Threat Alliance in its efforts to make united progress in the fight against sophisticated cyber adversaries.

The mission of the Cyber Threat Alliance is to drive a coordinated industry effort against cyber adversaries through deep collaboration on threat intelligence and sharing indicators of compromise.

While past industry efforts have often been limited to the exchange of malware samples, the Cyber Threat Alliance provides more actionable threat intelligence from contributing members, including information on zero-day vulnerabilities, botnet command and control (C&C) server information, mobile threats, and indicators of compromise (IoCs) related to advanced persistent threats (APTs), as well as the commonly-shared malware samples.

By raising the industry's collective actionable intelligence, alliance participants will be able to deliver greater security for individual customers and organizations.

 “We appreciate the charter of the Cyber Threat Alliance and believe there should be closer collaboration across security researchers, industry, education, and government,” said Stephen Pao, GM Security of Barracuda, which provides cloud-connected security and storage solutions that simplify IT.

Pedro Pablo Pérez, CyberSecurity Director, Telefónica, which is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world believes that the collaboration against cybercrime with leading companies in the security practice will lead to a better cyber-resilience in the digital world.

“Organizations combatting today’s cyber threats require both internal monitoring and external context to identify an adversary’s intentions and tactics. The Cyber Threat Alliance provides a collaborative vehicle for sharing critical external information and improving identification of advanced threats," said Mario Vuksan, CEO of ReversingLabs, which provides enterprises and security vendors a foundation for protecting digital assets.

For his part, Michael Sutton, Vice President, Security Research for Zscaler, which provides a Security-as-a-Service platform delivering a safe and productive Internet experience, said: “Today’s security threats are more insidious and difficult to thwart than ever and they are outpacing the ability of organizations to protect themselves. The exchange of actionable threat intelligence fostered by the Cyber Threat Alliance is a critical step toward a new level of industry collaboration that will result in greater security for vendors and clients alike.”