Cybersecurity resilience depends not only on technology but also on trusted relationships, effective coordination, shared practices, and the ability of incident response teams to collaborate across borders before, during, and after a crisis.
This is why Fortinet’s ongoing partnership with the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) is so important. FIRST connects Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs), Product Security Incident Response Teams (PSIRTs), independent security researchers, and experts from the public, private, and academic sectors to strengthen cooperation, coordination, and information exchange across the cybersecurity community.
For Fortinet, this partnership is both strategic and mission driven. FortiGuard Labs joined the FIRST community in 2012 when we began collaborating more closely with national CERTs, CSIRTs, law enforcement, and public-private partners worldwide. Over time, FIRST has become a vital link between Fortinet’s threat intelligence activities and the broader incident response community, fostering the trust, frameworks, and relationships needed to expand cross-border disruption efforts.
That long-standing collaboration advanced significantly in 2025, when Fortinet became a founding partner of FIRST CORE. CORE stands for Community, Operations, Resilience, and Empower. The initiative supports FIRST’s Community and Capacity Building program, which strengthens incident response skills in regions with limited resources. Through CORE, Fortinet and FIRST are working to expand access to training, foster regional engagement, support tabletop exercises, and promote other community-led activities that enhance operational preparedness and cyber resilience.
Cybersecurity is a team effort. Effective incident response depends on relationships established well before an incident occurs. When responders know how to work together, share information, and coordinate action, they are better prepared to manage incidents that cross organizational, sector, and national boundaries.
This is where FIRST plays a unique role. It provides a trusted forum for practitioners to share expertise, develop common procedures, and build the operational trust necessary for effective collaboration during urgent situations. Through FortiGuard Labs, Fortinet contributes threat intelligence, attribution details, and disruption expertise to support these public-private collaborations. FIRST then helps connect that work to a worldwide network of practitioners, enabling intelligence to be converted into coordinated responses.
CORE extends this model by focusing on the human infrastructure of cybersecurity. By supporting community development, regional participation, and training, CORE provides incident responders with more opportunities to learn together, develop common strategies, and foster relationships that strengthen cross-border collaboration.
Cybercrime is systemic. Threat actors often exploit regions where cybersecurity capacity is still developing and then use those environments as footholds for broader criminal operations. As a result, enhancing incident response in under-resourced areas is critical not only for regional stability but also for global resilience.
FIRST CORE was created to help address this challenge. In its inaugural year, CORE supported a range of capacity-building activities, including tabletop exercises, regional engagement across Africa, the Actioning Alerts and Advisories initiative with CTIR Gov Brazil, and Mobile Training Lab pilots involving FIRST community trainers from Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, and New Zealand. It also supported engagement with the Women of FIRST Special Interest Group and the Women in International Security and Cyberspace Fellowship at the UN Open-Ended Working Group.
These efforts demonstrate how targeted investment can have a practical and measurable impact. When local and regional teams gain improved access to training, exercises, and reliable networks, they are better equipped to detect, respond to, and recover from cyber incidents. That improves resilience not just for individual organizations or countries, but for the entire digital ecosystem.
In FIRST’s Improving Security Across Nations with FIRST video series, Derek Manky, chief security strategist and global VP of threat intelligence at Fortinet’s FortiGuard Labs, describes this work as an extension of Fortinet’s long-standing commitment to training and to closing the cyber skills gap. That focus is central to Fortinet’s broader mission. Defending the digital ecosystem starts with empowering the people on the front lines.
One of FIRST’s most important contributions is promoting internationally recognized best practices, frameworks, and standards that improve the effectiveness of incident response teams. These shared methods are vital because they offer teams a common language to assess risk, prioritize action, and coordinate response.
Fortinet’s involvement in standards such as the Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS) and the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) reflects the importance of this bidirectional relationship. Fortinet provides intelligence and operational insights from FortiGuard Labs, while the wider FIRST community enhances models and practices with practitioner feedback. This collaboration creates a stronger foundation for prioritization, forecasting, and response.
This matters because defenders face an overwhelming volume of alerts, vulnerabilities, and threats. Improved models enable security teams to concentrate on the most critical issues. They also help organizations move from reactive response toward earlier warning and more proactive security measures.
Fortinet integrates EPSS and CVSS into a threat radar that combines exploit prediction, criticality scoring, and Fortinet’s native threat intelligence. That intelligence can then feed SOC teams through SIEM and SOAR workflows, helping analysts prioritize actions and respond faster and more accurately. This is the practical value of community-driven standards: they become operational capabilities that help defenders act with greater confidence.
Cybersecurity exercises are crucial, not just for assessing technical response but also decision-making, communication, escalation procedures, and coordination. Plans are important, but untested plans can create false confidence.
FIRST CORE has helped facilitate tabletop and cyber drill activities that turn collaboration into readiness. These include Cyber Crisis Unplugged at FIRSTCON25, a tabletop exercise with the Women of FIRST SIG and WiC Fellows at the UN Open-Ended Working Group, and the AfricaCERT-FIRST remote cyber drill.
These activities are important because they turn resilience into actionable practice. They offer a structured approach for participants to test assumptions, find gaps, and refine response processes before a real incident occurs. They also foster collaboration among participants from various regions and organizations through realistic scenarios.
As threats become more intricate, incident response teams require more than written plans. They need proven procedures, reliable contacts, and the confidence that comes through joint exercises.
No single government, company, or response team can tackle the cybercrime challenge alone. The threat environment is too widespread, rapidly changing, and highly interconnected. Collaboration between the public and private sectors is essential because it brings together diverse perspectives, expertise, authority, and operational capabilities.
Fortinet’s collaboration with FIRST reflects this principle. FortiGuard Labs provides threat intelligence and operational insights, which are shared through FIRST with a worldwide network of responders, standards organizations, regional authorities, and capacity-building initiatives. Through CORE, Fortinet also supports the people, teams, and institutions that are vital for long-term resilience.
This collaboration further supports Fortinet’s broader commitment to reducing cybersecurity risk to society. For over 25 years, Fortinet has been protecting people, devices, and data worldwide. As digital infrastructure grows more vital to society, cybersecurity is essential to ensuring resilience, trust, and sustainable development. At Fortinet, this responsibility extends beyond technology. It also involves strengthening the communities, skills, and partnerships that help make the global digital ecosystem safer.
The next phase of FIRST CORE is focused on expanding engagement in regions where additional training, mentorship, and capacity building can create significant impact. Key priorities include strengthening engagement in Africa, introducing new training and capacity-building programs, hosting expanded regional symposia, and continuing collaboration with FIRST Special Interest Groups on topics such as AI security and ransomware response.
The opportunity is significant. AI-based attacks, exploitation of machine-learning models, cloud security threats, supply chain breaches, and the constant flow of security alerts reaching SOCs all demand improved intelligence, more accurate forecasting, and more capable analysts. CORE creates a platform where private-sector expertise, community leadership, and the public mission can collaborate effectively.
Fortinet’s commitment as a founding partner reflects confidence in this model. FIRST CORE goes beyond simple sponsorship. It is an investment in the worldwide incident response community and in the long-term resilience of the digital ecosystem.
Adaptive defense relies on trusted communities, shared practices, and ongoing collaboration. It also depends on the willingness of public and private organizations to invest in the people and relationships that make coordinated response possible.
As the threat landscape continues to evolve, the importance of global collaboration will only increase. Through FIRST CORE, Fortinet and FIRST are helping build the capacity, trust, and readiness necessary to combat current threats and strengthen cybersecurity communities worldwide.
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