ISNorthEast brings together the information governance, assurance and security professionals from public sector organisations in Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, Durham and the Tees Valley in a trusted community.

ISNorthEast allows them to get together on a regular basis to share good practice, exchange views and address information assurance and cyber security issues facing local public service organisations that could potentially be affecting everyone.

Membership is open to information security and information assurance officers from non-profit public service organisations in the north east region and their outsourced delivery partners and is free of charge. Members from organisations outside the north east region may be admitted at the forum’s discretion.

ISNorthEast holds online meetings every other month where common issues are discussed, sometimes with invited expert speakers. In addition to meetings, members receive a daily round ups of threats, vulnerabilities and relevant news stories.

Critically, members have a mechanism to immediately alert each other of real threats being encountered in a sort of ‘neighbourhood watch’ for public data and systems.

What benefits do members receive?

Advice Brokering

• Regular meetings.


• A secure online collaboration space to support discussion and knowledge sharing.


• Information security news stories and developments curated from a number of different sources distributed as a daily email newsletter.


• Best practice shared with other local authority WARPs.


• Representation in  national forums involving Government departments and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Trusted Sharing

• Members share information about security incidents anonymised if required, so that everyone can benefit from lessons learned.


• Access to information from other public sector WARPs.


• WARPs are the primary interface between Councils and the NCSC.

Critical Alerts

• Members notify each other of critical issues using an online messaging solution.

Warnings

• Notifications and alerts on viruses, malware and software vulnerabilities are curated from a number of different sources including other local authority WARPs and distributed by email.