New Zealand to launch CERT by 2009?

New Zealand is in the process of creating its own Computer Emergency Response Team and hopes to have the organisation up and running in three years, ZDNet Australia has learnt.

NZCERT will provide a central resource for the country's government agencies to learn about, and share information on, IT security issues and threats. The organisation will also provide a formal link with AusCERT, according to people familiar with the project.

"NZ works quite closely with AusCERT and a lot of the government department individual agencies have membership of AusCERT and I think the hope is to centralise that within NZ and ... bring all that kind of information together," they said.

One of the biggest issues to be resolved is who will run and finance NZCERT's activities.

"It will depend on where it will fall because it requires substantial funding. Commercial (organisations) are vying for it, universities are vying for it and even government departments want a finger in it.

"I think the timeline is 2009 -- whether that is going to occur or not will be interesting but there is a lot of discussion going on right now between state services and central government," they told ZDNet Australia.

In Australia, the CERT is a not-for-profit organisation funded with a combination of member subscriptions and the provision of security training. AusCERT also receives a relatively small federal government grant.

In July 2005, general manager of AusCERT Graham Ingram said: "If AusCERT didn't exist, the cost to the government would be estimated at somewhere between AU$5 million and AU$10 million a year... They would like to offer us about AU$700,000".