September 25, 2014 - The US Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) and the Depository Trust and Clearing Company (DTCC) have developed a centalised utility for financial firms to post and share information related to cyber-attacks and security threats.

The joint venture, named Soltra, has been established to collect, distill and speed the transfer of threat intelligence from a myriad of sources to help safeguard against cyber attacks.

Over 125 FS-ISAC members and representatives from other critical sectors, government entities and the private sector contributed to the requirements, architecture and design of the Soltra Edge platform, which is currently undergoing user-testing and will be available for general uptake in late 2014.

"Today, most cyber threat information is provided manually to users from various, unconnected industry sources. Because of this, on average, it can take firms seven hours to evaluate each threat," states Mark Clancy, CEO of Soltra, CISO of DTCC andboard member of FS-ISAC. "With Soltra Edge, one organisation's incident becomes everyone's defense. The solution will enable clients to send, receive, and store cyber security threat intelligence in a streamlined and automated format, enabling these firms to deploy safeguards against a potential cyber attack."

Soltra Edge was named after one of the best-known medieval beacon fire networks in Europe that warned of invaders.

Bill Nelson, president of Soltra and president and CEO of FS-ISAC, says: "Today's threat intelligence sharing must occur at network speeds. It needs to reduce the workload for security analysts and for smaller organisations. It needs to be available for all critical sectors in order to share information within each sector and also cross-sector to increase resiliency from cyber threats."