Experiences and Challenges with using CERT Data to Analyze International Cyber Security

With the increasing interconnection of computer networks and sophistication of cyber attacks, it is important to understand the dynamics of such situations, especially in regards to cyber international relations. The Explorations in Cyber International Relations (ECIR) Data Dashboard Project is an initiative to gather worldwide cybersecurity data publicly provided by nation-level Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) and to provide a set of tools to analyze the cybersecurity data. The unique contributions of this paper are: (1) an evaluation of the current state of the diverse nation-level CERT cybersecurity data sources, (2) a description of the Data Dashboard tool developed and some interesting analyses from using our tool, and (3) a summary of some challenges with the CERT data availability and usability uncovered in our research.