Who are we
CYNET is Cyprus’ National Research and Education Network. It provides a network infrastructure for the Cypriot Research and Education Community. CYNET connects educational and research institutions. The national backbone of CYNET is connected to the European backbone GEANT2 that is a part of the worldwide community of research and education networks. Through this connection the CYNET backbone is connected to the Global Internet as well. CYNET’s main objective is to provide e-infrastructure and e-services exclusively to the educational and research community through its participation in programmes funded by the European Union.
CYNET-CSIRT is our newly founded Academic Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), hosted by the Cyprus Research and Academic Network (CYNET). In building CYNET-CSIRT, we had to take careful design decisions for striking a balance between different inherent trade-offs. More precisely, approaching security from an academic perspective may seem fairly counterintuitive compared to real-world security. For instance, in an academic setting, the goal is to produce novelty. On the other hand, tracking real attack incidents may be much more practical and more important. In order to strike a balance between these two worlds, we have carefully considered incorporating traditional techniques with modern research-oriented approaches in the underlying technologies that compose our CSIRT.
Mission
CYNET-CSIRT aims to provide incident response and security services to all Academic Institutions, Research Institutes and educational networks that are members of CyNet. It also aims to provide early warnings, alerts, announcements and dissemination of information to its constituency and relevant parties regarding risks and incidents. This will be accomplished by acting as an intermediary between affected parties and offering, when required, technical advice leading to the resolution of the incident. The affected parties may be internal or external entities to CYNET. Furthermore, CYNET-CSIRT aims to educate its members about the effects of cyber-threats and cyber-crime, and train them to provide early warnings, alerts, announcements and efficient use of the respective tools. The Cyprus Academic CSIRT also aspires to become a member of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) and Trusted Introducer (TI) affiliation, so as to increase both the maturity and capabilities of the Academic CSIRT.