Welcome to the WARP website

If you are familiar with WARPs already, you may wish to click on the 'WARP Register', ‘FWA’or ‘WARP Toolbox’ links above. Or if you are interested in WARPs in the educational sector click on WARP for schools above. Alternatively, if you want to know more about how WARP Operators work together then we have a new page on the WARP Operators Forum (WOF).

The WARP community meets once a year and in June 2008 over 100 people looked at 'expanding the WARP mission' - details in the updated WARP Annual Forum page.

If you’re not sure what a WARP (Warning, Advice and Reporting Point) is, then in a nutshell:

• A typical WARP will consist of an operator who knows a little bit about IT security, but is mainly good at communicating with a group of WARP members.

• There will usually be between 20 and 100 members, otherwise it can lose that personal touch, and they will belong to a community (small businesses, local government, service providers, interest groups etc etc).

• The operator uses a website, email, telephone, SMS, and occasional meetings (where possible) to send a personalised service of warnings and advice to the members.

• This will be mainly IT security advice (because there’s so much of it, and it changes so rapidly), but can include other material (other threats, e-crime, contingency planning etc) as well.

• The Operator also taps into the knowledge of the members themselves to help out other members using a bulletin board, meetings and general communication skills.

• A successful WARP will build up enough Trust to encourage members to talk about their own incidents & problems, anonymously, for the benefit of the rest (a bit like the ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ idea).

• WARPs are small, personal and ‘Not-for-Profit’.

If you’re still interested, please continue to the Introduction page to find out more about what a WARP is, why it is special, and what it might do for you.

You can also see a listing of all existing Registered WARPs at the Register of WARPs page.

If you think building trust is difficult and you do not know where to start, then look at the work the WARP programme has done on building trust within the Trusted Sharing WARP service.