KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 23 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has formed the Information Sharing Forum (ISF) with various Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and other agencies to address information and network security issues in Malaysia.

In a statement, MCMC said that the forum would be working on a "Whitelist" (a database on local IP addresses that are deemed spam or virus-free), an Acceptable Internet Use Policy and Internet Peering Policy for ISPs to adopt.

These efforts are some of the initiatives to improve communication channel and mutual understanding between ISPs in managing information and network security incidents which, if not addressed, would lead to slower information dissemination and ineffective security incident response handling in the country, it said.

The MCMC said that the objective of the ISF is to bring together the relevant parties into a single forum to share their experience and expertise for the benefit of the Malaysian network infrastructure, and to establish effective information sharing mechanism.

MCMC said that it wanted to encourage cooperation between different network owners and operators, and among the Internet community, which would in the long run, improve security analysis, warning, response and recovery, and more importantly better management of the network.

"It is our objective also, in establishing the ISF, to minimise damages from online security attacks as the ISF would be an avenue to prevent exploits, damages and disruption of vital systems and to ensure network reliability and integrity," it said.

In the long run, the MCMC said that the ISF would complement and support one of the 10 national objectives in the communications and multimedia sector outlined by the Government, to ensure information security and network reliability and integrity.

The ISF is headed by the MCMC. Its members are the ICT Security Division of Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), the National ICT Security Emergency Response Centre (NISER), TIMENet, NTT MSC, Jaring, TMNet, Celcom, Maxis, DiGi and the Malaysian Technical Standards Forum Bhd.

-- BERNAMA