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Filtered Warnings Service

The following sections describe the stages required to develop, provide and operate the WARP Filtered Warnings service and the infrastructure required.

1. Introduction

2. Service development

3. Service operation

4. Software - Filtered Warnings Application (FWA)

1. Introduction

The Filtered Warnings Service enables WARP members to receive security related Warnings and Advisories that are filtered, based upon each individual's area of interest. Security information from a number of information sources (such as UNIRAS), are categorised against a list of possible information subjects for relevance and urgency and then disseminated by the WARP operator in a timely manner.

The Filtered Warnings Service takes information from many sources. This information is processed by the WARP administrator to add local information and value, and then distributed to only those WARP members that have expressed an interest in data within specific categories.  This service requires a number of capabilities, including:

• The ability to record WARP member subscription information.
• The capability to receive alerts from various sources.
• A method of creating warnings and advisories for the WARP community in a standardised form.
• The ability to distribute the created warnings and advisories to the correct WARP members.

Whilst these functions could be implemented using standard e-mail and Office tools, clearly without some specialised tools this service will be extremely labour intensive.  Individual WARPs can take it upon themselves to develop tools to assist in the operation of the Filtered Warnings Service, and if they do CPNI would be very interested to receive information about work carried out that could benefit others.

This service delivers the 'Warnings' part of the Warning, Advice and Reporting Point.

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2. Service development

An important aspect of operating the Filtered Warnings Service, is to agree with your WARP membership the service level that you will be able to provide. If, for example, you are only providing the service within normal working hours, it is important that your membership understands this and does not consider it to be 24*7. It is also very important that your membership understands what sources you will be analysing so that they can make alternative arrangements if they need information from additional sources. The following document contains an outline service definition that you can modify to suit your needs.

Service definition for a WARP Filtered Warnings Service (V2.0 July 2006)

Each WARP will use a list of sources for warnings and advisories. A WARP can gain unique advantage as an information source to its members by selecting information sources that will be of most benefit. For example, if a specific software package is used by WARP members, the vendor of that package might be chosen as an information source. The following document contains a list of information sources that may be used as a starting point.

Typical information sources for a WARP Filtered Warnings Service (V2.0 October 2006)

 

The following table lists sources identified in the previous document:

The Filtered Warnings service must allow WARP members to choose which Warnings and Advisories they receive, by selecting categories into which the WARP operator will sort the source material.. One of the key aspects of developing the Filtered warnings service is to define the categories that will be made available to the members. During the pilot WARP operations, the categories defined in the following document were used, but you may well wish to define your own:

Filtered Warnings - example categories (V1.0 October 2006)

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3. Service operation

The Filtered Warnings Service will require effort to keep running and sustain its relevance to the WARP community.  If run, The Filtered Warnings Application helps by automating the distribution of warnings, and allowing WARP members to modify their selections, but creating warnings from the various information sources will always require skill in order to add value.  The following document provides a worked example showing the procedure that can be required to create a warning:

How to write a Warning or Advisory (V2.0 October 2006)

Another important task is to ensure that the WARP has good sources of information upon which to base warnings and advisories. From time to time new sources may become available, and others may become less relevant. The following document discusses keeping the source list up to date:

Maintaining information sources for a WARP Filtered Warnings Service (V1.0 June 2004)

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4. Software - Filtered Warnings Application (FWA)

The Filtered Warnings Application (FWA) software is only available to registered WARPs (i.e. approved by CPNI under the WARP registration process) who have paid the appropriate fee and agreed to the end user software licence agreement. To obtain the software and licence key please contact

An external development company, Avius Experience, provide a download facility for the FWA software and a site to collect together the FWA guidance material (Video clips, Handbook etc). This is presently only available to registered WARPs using the FWA software. The company is also offering a support contract to WARPs using FWA. For futher details contact NB. CPNI do not favour one supplier over another and encourage other suppliers who may want to support FWA to offer similar services.

The FWA software is described in the Avius site, however some information is also provided on this WARP site which is normally accessed via the FWA Software links on the navigation bars in the WARP introductory pages.

Next step - Advice Brokering Service describes the second WARP core service.

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