Training Together to Fight Cybercrime: Improving Cooperation
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity releases a new report and training material to support the cooperation among CSIRTs, Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) and their interaction with the judiciary.

The publications are designed to help tackle the challenges of this complex multi-stakeholder cooperation. The report, the handbook and the toolset are a set of deliverables complementing each other as follows:

The report analyses roles, duties, competences, synergies and potential interferences across Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) - in particular, national and governmental ones, LE and judiciary (prosecutors and judges);
The handbook helps a trainer explain these concepts through different scenarios;
The toolset consists of exercises meant for trainees based on the handbook’s scenarios.

The report proposes a methodology to analyse the legal and organisational framework defining the roles and duties, the required competencies of CSIRTs and LE. It also identifies synergies and the potential interferences that may occur while engaging in the activities needed to respond to incidents of criminal nature and in fighting cybercrime.
In addition, it presents a detailed analysis focusing on Czechia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, and Sweden. The methodology proposed can be used for a more comprehensive future analysis covering additional countries as it is based on:

desk research;
subject matter expert interviews;
the segregation of duties (SoD) matrix.

This SoD matrix is also available in the ENISA repositories in GitHub, as well as the documentation on the Reference Security Incident Taxonomy Working Group (RSIT).
The RSIT working group will meet today as part of the 62nd TF-CSIRT Meeting. These are two other examples of the efforts ENISA engages in to contribute to building a bridge between CSIRTs and LE communities.
Main conclusions of the 2020 report on CSIRTs and LE cooperation include:

The communities already engage in a number of actions meant to:

Avoid interferences wherever possible;
Create effective partnerships;
Use their synergies to support each other.




However, interferences may still happen in the process of incident handling and cybercrime investigations, mainly because of the difference in purpose and mandate of each of these communities, i.e. incident mitigation (CSIRTs) compared with evidence preservation and criminal prosecution (LE and the judiciary).


Joint training activities are organised mainly in community pairs, being either CSIRT and LE or LE and the judiciary. Such activities rarely involve the three communities. The joint training activities help the wider development of the competences required to respond to cybercrime.


Overall, the 2019 pandemic of the COVID-19 virus did not have any significant impact on cooperation and exchanges between the three communities and their ability to function. Interaction even increased in some instances. For example, daily dialogues became more frequent in order to ensure that each community was kept informed as the situation evolved.

Access the report and the training
ENISA Report on CSIRT-LE Cooperation - A study of the roles and synergies among selected countries
Training - Aspects of Cooperation between CSIRTs and Law Enforcement Agencies
Background
The response to cybercrime requires the cooperation of all actors involved. In this response, CSIRTs, LE and the judiciary perform each a different role and seek different objectives. Helping CSIRTs, LE and the judiciary understand their roles, duties and competences reciprocally will allow a closer cooperation while building on synergies and hence avoid possible interferences.
ENISA has been collecting input from the communities and compiling reports to shed light on the different aspects of the cooperation. These efforts are meant to further enhance the cooperation between CSIRTs and LE and their interaction with the judiciary, In addition, the Agency has been developing training material and co-organising the annual ENISA-EC3 workshop on CSIRT-LE Cooperation. The last edition of this event took place on 16 September 2020.
This new report and training material build on the work already completed in the area over the past. It contributed to the implementation of the ENISA programming document 2020-2022. The work conducted by ENISA in this area is planned to continue in 2021.
Contacts
For questions related to the press and interviews, please contact press (at) enisa.europa.eu
 
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