The EC is fostering the establishment and development of EU ICASs across essential industry sectors. Their empowerment will promote horizontal structured coordination among various European ISACs, offering business services and technical solutions to support their daily operations to foster cybersecurity. 

The Consortium aims at mobilising public and private actors to establish and further develop European ISACs across different industry sectors. ISACs are private public partnerships (PPPs) between stakeholders that provide a central resource for gathering information on cyber threats and similar cybersecurity vulnerabilities. They are usually formed by private sector initiative, in particular operators of essential services of the critical sectors. ISACs collect, analyse and disseminate actionable threat information to their members and provide them with tools to mitigate risks and enhance resilience.

“Economic losses due to cyber attacks can be prevented with cooperation, ISACs help facilitate this type of collaboration.”

An ISAC is established to facilitate information-sharing and (sectoral) analysis. Among the activities an ISAC can undertake:

• Organizing meetings comprising a number of high level security experts from participating organizations;
• Addressing tactical/strategic issues (e.g. major/critical disruptions) with cross-organizational relevance;
• Facilitating the trust-based exchange of information between members with a technical solution/platform;
• Performing sectoral analysis on trends, incidents or other developments to share this knowledge with the constituents;
• Undertaking or organizing activities to improve the cyber security awareness or knowledge in the sector, such as organizing thematic sessions or campaigns;
• Facilitating the training or testing of professionals or technical solutions in the sector;
• Disseminating and/or influencing (European) cybersecurity legislation.

The consortium is currently already supporting a number of European ISAC initiatives to improve maturity, coordination and best practices.