A National Information Security Incident Response Center is Created

Last February 22, Resolution No. 1/2021 of the Argentine Directorate of Cybersecurity (the “Resolution”) was published in the Official Gazette. The Resolution created the National Information Security Incident Response Center (the “CERT.ar”), a specialized government organization created to respond to security incidents.

The Resolution is grounded on the public health emergency surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in increased use of electronic platforms by the National Public Sector and, consequently, higher risks and threats to information security.

Likewise, the Resolution is consistent with the United Nations’ UNGGE 2015 report, which recommends that member states establish a national team to respond to information emergencies or information security incidents.

CERT.ar looks to coordinate the oversight of security incidents at a national level as well as to assist both the national public sector in the event of such incidents as well as the National Critical Information Infrastructure, as defined by Resolution No. 1523/2019 (for more information, please see IT News No. 26 here).

CERT.ar’s main responsibilities are:

• to administer and manage information on security incident reports from the national public sector;
• to provide technical assistance to security incidents reported by the national public sector;
• to handle any security information incidents that may affect critical resources at a national level;
• to boost the development of prevention, detection, warning, and recovery capabilities for security incident responses;
• to cooperate with the governments of the provinces and the City of Buenos Aires in handling security incidents.

The Resolution can be accessed in Spanish here.