Soltra has launched Soltra Edge, a threat intelligence sharing platform designed to help protect companies and market infrastructures from cyber attacks.
Soltra is a joint venture of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (FS-ISAC) and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), and was formed to tackle the growing threat of cyber crimes in the financial industry.
It has already created a standardised format for structured threat information expression (STIX) and a standard protocol for routing threat information in its trusted automated exchange of indicator information (TAXII).
The new software collects intelligence from various sources and converts it in to standardised language in the STIX format. It duplicates the data for immediate sharing and prioritises the most important information, before routing it to a security service that blocks the suspected threat from corporate networks.
Companies will be able to manage their own data, set security controls and manage sharing capabilities, as Soltra Edge merely allows a flow of threat intelligence between organisations, communities and devices.
Bill Nelson, president of Soltra and president and CEO of FS-ISAC, said: “Soltra Edge will do for cyber security what networking protocols did for computer networks decades ago. It will connect thousands of entities globally, enable them to communicate using a consistent language and help organisations take immediate action.”
“The more critical entities that use Soltra Edge and the more cyber security vendors that plug into Soltra Edge using adapters, the more potent the defence for all those connected.”
Mark Clancy, CEO of Soltra, chief information security officer of DTCC and board member of FS-ISAC, added: “In the current environment, cyber attackers can use a few hundred dollars worth of software and the power of cloud computing to launch attacks that require exponential resources to defend and mitigate.”
The standard software will be available at no cost, but an advanced version will include additional features to support scalability and redundancy.
Soltra Edge is being hailed as a cross-industry initiative across more that 150 FS-ISAC members, as well as government entities and private-sector companies. The software should be available in early December, after 45 companies complete a trial run.
Kelly King, chairman and CEO of BB&T corporation, commented: “Defending against today's cyber threats and attacks often takes more than any one organisation, it takes an industry working together. We see Soltra Edge as a pivotal part of our community defence efforts.”
