UK Government's Security Awareness Site is Launched

The UK Government has just launched a new security awareness site. ITsafe.gov.uk is "designed to provide both home users and small businesses with proven, plain English advice to help protect computers, mobile phones and other devices from malicious attack. It consists of both the Advice on this website, and a low-volume Alerting Service."

This site is a part of the Government and business partnership programme Project Endurance, which is being funded by a number of commercial organisations and government departments/agencies. See here for ITsafe's partner list.

Thus far, the site is not overly compelling although this will improve with time. The information is limited and the site design requires a lot of server hits - the amount of information returned from each hit is limited. Content wise, the site is very new - there are no security alerts, no security advisories, and only two "other" advisories (one relating to a buffer overflow issue with Trend AntiVirus software and the other a FireFox vulnerability). The amount of information that is displayed for each issue is also limited, although links to more information are provided.

Despite these minor grumbles, this is a a great start to Project Endurance. You can sign up to receive ITsafe bulletins by email by going here. One nice touch with the sign up - the signup form asks for an itsafe word. This word is then added to the subject heading in the email - highly useful for filtering purposes. It would also reduce the risk of phishing attacks allegedly coming from itsafe.

For more security links, see Technorati's Security page.