Part
01
of four
Part
01
Overview - ISAC's/ISAO's
The National Council of ISACs, the umbrella body for all ISACs and ISAOs, has 24 members out of which 20 are listed on their website. This means that every 3 years, for the last 18 years, 2 ISACs/ISAOs have been formed. These organizations are about 88% nonprofit represent critical sectors such as automobile, aviation, communication and others. We found there has been an increase in these organizations based on geography (there at least two in California) and industry (the finance sector is further breaking down into industrial sectors e.g Credit Unions). Based on the growth of established ISAOs and ISACs, we can predict that there will be an average of 2 organizations founded per year in the next 3-5 years.
Please find below a dive into this request.
NUMBER OF ISAOs/ISACs
The NCI lists 20 ISACs across various sectors. These are automotive, aviation, communications, defense, downstream, electricity, emergence management, finance, health, info-tech and maritime. Others are multi-state, national defense, national health, oil and gas, real estate, research and education, intelligence, surface and public transport and water. However, as of March 2018, there are 24 registered members. These ISACs were established between 1999 and 2017.
Please find below a dive into this request.
GROWTH IN ISAOs/ISACs
On the average, 1.3 ISACs established each year. We arrived at this figure by dividing the number of ISACs by the number of years since the first ISAC was founded.
Overall growth in 18 years= 24/18 =1.3
In real terms, some years have seen more growth than others. For example, while there were no ISACs founded in certain years, the highest growths we found were in 2014 with four ISACs founded and 2003 with three ISACs established. We can, therefore, conclude that growth of ISACs has been uneven.
Yet, we found that some organizations are operating as ISAOs but have not identified with NCI by registration, while others are still working on their framework. Based on this information, we believe that more numbers will be added in the next few years. This growth will be based both on geography (the location of the ISAOs) and industry (a break up of some current ISAOs). For example, in California, there is more than one ISAO, while in the finance sector, Credit Unions are separating from Financial Institutions ISAC to form National Credit Unions ISAO.
Basing our prediction on the information we have for the last five years, we can say that there will be an average of 2 ISACs/ISAOs established annually in the next 3-5 years. We arrived at this figure by adding the number of ISACs from 2013 to 2017 and dividing it by the number of years. (See the Section 'NUMBER OF ISAOs/ISACs BY YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT' below)
Average yearly growth in the last 5 years=9/5 =1.8 or approx 2.
If you add the number of ISAO's from 2013 to 2017 as shown below, you will get the number 8. But, in our triangulation above, we have said at least 9. This is because this interview from April 2017 lists three ISAOs (Southern California ISAO, Northeast Ohio Cyber Consortium and Virginia Cyber Range) which are not included in the NCI website. Also, after searching through NCI's websites, reports, press releases and articles, we could only account for the date of establishment of 17 ISACs out of 24 reported by the NCI website. Therefore, there is a possibility that at least one additional ISAO would have been established between 2013 and 2017.
NUMBER OF ISAOs/ISACs BY YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT
We have presented the number of ISACs by the years they were formed below.
2001: NA
2004-2006: NA
2008-2009: NA
2011-2012: NA
2016: NA
CONCLUSION
To wrap up, in the last 18 years, there have been 24 ISACs/ISAOs formed. These organizations cover information sharing in critical sectors such as aviation, finance, health, defense and so on. We can expect continued growth in ISAOs/ISACs based on geography and industry as a greater need for information sharing continues to arise. We predict a growth of two ISACs/ISAOs each year for the next 5 years.