State of the Practice of Computer Security Incident Response Teams ...

FIRST Members by year
160
140
Number of FIRST Teams
120
100
80
60
40
Latin America
Asia/Pacific
Europe
North America
20
0
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
Year
Figure 4: Growth of FIRST Teams since 1990
As of August 2003, the actual number of FIRST teams, broken down by region, was
• Asia/Pacific: 13
• Latin America (South America, Central America, and Mexico): 5
• Europe: 51
• North America (Canada and the United States): 82
As can be seen in the chart above, North America has had a continuing increase in the number
of teams over the years. Beginning in 2000, there was a sharper increase in the number of
European teams. Most Asia/Pacific teams joined FIRST in or after 1997-1998.The majority
of the Latin American teams joined FIRST beginning in 2001.
3.1.2 Growth in European CSIRTs
Another set of teams for which we have good statistical data is the European teams. This is
because the Trusted Introducer has created a directory of all known European teams, 52
whether they are FIRST members, Trusted Introducer members, or not in either group. This
does not mean that every team in Europe has been identified; there are probably many local
teams that have not publicly announced themselves.
52
CMU/SEI-2003-TR-001 39