The Organization for Internet Safety (OIS), a unique alliance of leading technology vendors, security researchers and consultancies, today announced its formation.
The OIS was formed to propose and institutionalize industry best practices for handling security vulnerabilities to ensure that security and technology vendors, and security researchers, can more effectively protect Internet users.
Founding members of the OIS include @stake, BindView Corp., Caldera International, Inc. (The SCO Group), Foundstone, Guardent, Internet Security Systems, Inc., Microsoft Corp., Network Associates, Oracle Corporation, SGI and Symantec.
A pretty comprehensive FAQ is also available.
This will be interesting to watch. It’s currently vendor dominated — but seeking to build an Advisory Council of “customers” — with their participation being totally subject to the approval of the vendors.
It’s often difficult to make progress in the association context when governance is separated from constituency in this way.