While cleaning out my old feeds yesterday, I came across an article from May about a new group which hopes to become “the CDC of cyber security.”

“The group calls itself the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber-Terrorism (IMPACT), and its advisory board features tech luminaries like Google’s Vint Cerf and Symantec CEO John Thompson.”

As the Ars Technica writer points out, this CDC-like approach of cooperating and sharing information and strategy to avoid catastrophic network-based attacks is probably a smarter approach to cybersecurity than the “nation-state-centric “cyber warfare” paradigm that is also emerging.” Although I’m still wary that an organization like IMPACT, which doesn’t include China and Russia, will be too centralized, it is certainly closer to the “rough consensus and running code” approach which characterizes the net.

Another approach to Internet security I recently learned about is OpenDNS which aims to speed up web-surfing and block malware sites. Unfortunately, because it is marketed as a solution to businesses, libraries and schools, administrators can also block innocuous sites like popular social networks. However, they have had great success so far (commercially) and use an intriguing community-based model to label suspicious websites – something which is much better than the secret blocklists of many filtering companies.

Finally, another approach which has gained some traction is StopBadware.org which is a partnership between academia, private enterprise and non-profits to identify “badware sites.” Most interesting is their partnership with Google who now warns search users that they may be visiting a badware site. In the coming months, expect more out of StopBadware.org, including the Herdict project which seeks to crowdsource security.

[See previous thoughts on cybercrime here.]

Update: See Cory Doctorow’s word of caution regarding unintended consequences of fighting malware (in this case spam).

Update II: More news on Federal involvement in cybersecurity.