The Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is an organization whose members work together voluntarily to deal with computer security problems and their prevention. The organization is composed of incident response teams, a steering committee, and a secretariat, which is currently NIST, and ad hoc working groups. Much of the focus is on Internet security-related threats. The forum meets regularly and conducts annual workshops on incident handling.

Many businesses, universities, and government organizations are members of FIRST. A list of members, background information, and information on membership is available on-line. To connect via gopher and ftp, use the following:

gopher gopher.first.org

ftp first.org - login as user ``anonymous''

To access the clearinghouse via an http client, use the following Uniform Resource Locator (URL):

http://www.first.org/first

More information about FIRST can be obtained from any participating member or the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the following address:

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams
A-216, Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899
301-975-3359
first@first.org