Short for the
Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center. CERT was started in December 1988 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was part of the U.S. Department of Defense, after the Morris Worm disabled about 10% of all computers connected to the
Internet. CERT/CC is located at the Software Engineering Institute, a federally funded research center operated by Carnegie Mellon University.
Cert/CC studies Internet security vulnerabilities, provides services to Web sites that have been attacked and publishes security alerts. CERT/CC’s research activities include the area of WAN computing and developing improved Internet security. The organization also provides training to incident response professionals.