ISAC

ISAC stands for Information Sharing and Analysis Center. It is a sector-specific organization that collects, analyzes, and disseminates information about cybersecurity and physical security threats, incidents, vulnerabilities, and mitigations to organizations within a critical infrastructure sector. ISACs are typically member-based nonprofits or industry consortia that facilitate trusted information sharing among member companies and public-sector partners.

Core activities include real-time threat alerts, vulnerability advisories, strategic risk analysis, and incident coordination; the goal is to improve collective cybersecurity resilience and incident response. ISACs operate through secure portals and mailing lists, and often exchange data using standardized formats and protocols such as TAXII and STIX to enable automated sharing. They maintain sector-specific intelligence on adversaries, attack patterns, and protective controls, and provide guidance, best practices, and exercises for members. They also act as liaison with government agencies.

Examples of well-known ISACs in the United States include the Financial Services ISAC (FS-ISAC), the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, and the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC or H-ISAC). There are ISACs for other sectors such as critical infrastructure and industrial control systems (ICS-IS).

Governance typically involves a board drawn from member organizations and contributions through dues, with support from government programs and public-private partnerships. ISACs grew out of efforts in the United States to improve critical infrastructure protection in the early 2000s and have since become a central mechanism for sector-specific threat intelligence sharing worldwide. They emphasize privacy, data-handling policies, and the non-attribution of shared information.