Tech giants team up and form new security initiative

Five of the biggest names in the technology industry have teamed up for a new security initiative.

Known as the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI), the group will examine ways in which multiple companies can respond to a single security threat.

Founding members of the nonprofit group include Cisco, Intel, IBM and Juniper Networks.

The aim of the project is to deal with security threats that may affect multiple companies. The group plans to seek out better ways to cooperate with one another and notify users in the event of an attack.

"During the last few years, common Internet security threats have evolved from wide-reaching worms and viruses to more sophisticated, stealth attacks that may begin to simultaneously target multiple products or shared protocols in multiple products," the group said in a statement.

"ICASI will allow IT vendors to work together to address multi-vendor security threats."

The group will also look for ways to improve the rollout of multi-vendor security patches and look to establish a better system for reporting and mitigating security flaws.

Cooperation between multiple companies, particularly in the face of a large-scale attack, has become a top priority in recent years. Collaboration strategies were said to be one of the central themes of the recent Cyber Storm 2 government exercise.