The Impact of Organizational Structure and Technology Use on Collaborative Practices in Computer Emergency Response Teams: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Besides the merits of increasing digitization and interconnectedness in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are more and more exposed to cyberattacks. In order to enhance the preventative and reactive capabilities against cyberattacks, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are deployed in many countries and organizations. In Germany, CERTs in the public sector operate on federal and state level to provide information security services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. Their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats and incidents is getting more complex due to the increasing amount of information disseminated into public channels. By adopting the perspectives of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Crisis Informatics, we contribute to the study of organizational structures, technology use, and the impact on collaborative practices in and between state CERTs with empirical research based on expert interviews with representatives of German state CERTs (N=15) and supplementary document analyses (N=25). We derive design and policy implications from our findings, including the need for interoperable and modular architecture, a shift towards service level agreements, cross-platform monitoring and analysis of incident data, use of deduplication techniques and standardized threat exchange formats, a reduction of resource costs through process automation, and transparent reporting and tool structures for information exchange.