The Mauritian minister of IT and telecommunications, Etienne Sinatambou, launched the Computer Emergency Response Team of Mauritius (CERT-MU) last Friday. On its way to becoming a "cyber-island," the small island state off the east coast of Africa is becoming increasingly exposed to cyber-security threats.

Mauritius wanted to have the CERT-MU set up this year because it's one of the priority programs in its Information & Communication Technologies Strategic Plan for 2007-2011, Sinatambou said. Its mission is to enhance the security of Mauritius’ IT infrastructure through collaboration amongst all the stakeholders.

And there’s a real danger. On May 8, at 11 p.m. local time, Mauritius was the victim of an attempt to bring down the government portal, although timely work by technicians succeeded in keeping it up and running. "We are vulnerable. If the White House has been attacked, if so many places were brought down, we can only try our best," the minister said.

It was in this context that the Mauritian National Computer Board (NCB) entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Indian CERT in March 2007, to set up an equivalent of the Indian group. Its primary role will be to prevent government institutions and private organizations operating in Mauritius, such as Internet service providers and banks, from falling prey to hackers.

The first phase is now up and running. Using existing resources of the NCB and the Government Online Center (GOC), which hosts the government portal at www.gov.mu, the CERT-MU is expected to play an important role in cultivating awareness, management, detection and prevention of security threats at a national level. It will act as a focal point to address the cyber-security concerns of Mauritius and respond to computer security incidents.

It will also be responsible for alerting the user community when cyber-security threats arise, and will publish white papers on issues pertaining to the topic. The team will also issue monthly security bulletins and security guidelines.

The authorities may be eager to see the CERT-MU fully operational, but it will take some time. The third and last phase of the project probably won't be in full swing for another 18 months.