Blog
Happy Birthday GCA!
By Aimée Larsen Kirkpatrick
Four years ago (and a day) the Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) was officially incorporated. A small team of dedicated individuals – William Pelgrin, Adnan Baykal and Mary Kavaney – worked for more than a year to bring GCA to life with support of Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr., the City of London Police, and the Center for Internet Security. GCA was a big idea, with smart people behind it and the passion and drive to do good in the world. Our mission: Unite the Global Community to Eradicate Cyber Risk.
Now, four years later, GCA has made its mark. We are living up to our mantra: Do Something. Measure It.
We have built a global partnership network of more than 260 organizations from 18 sectors and more than 30 countries. GCA staff has grown from the original 3 to 28 people in 5 countries (US, Canada, UK, Belgium and Germany).
In the four years since we were founded, we have made significant strides in making DMARC a global standard. In addition to the UK, the US, the Netherlands and New Zealand have mandated DMARC implementation across government domains. The implementation of DMARC has increased across many sectors, and we currently have a DMARC Bootcamp running with more than 1,800 participants representing 55 countries.
We developed and launched a global protective DNS service, Quad9, which protects millions of people around the world every day.
This past year we developed and launched the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small Business and the Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections. More toolkits and more functionality is in the works to bring these free resources to those who need them most.
Over the summer we launched the Automated IoT Defence Ecosystem (AIDE) to identify threats to IoT devices and provide threat data to manufacturers and researchers.
We’ve also taken the “Measure It” part of our mandate seriously. This past year we were able to measure the economic value of the work we’ve done on DMARC – the return on investment was up to 35 times the investment we made. We also looked at the economic benefits of protective DNS services (such as Quad9). From the incidents we analyzed, protective DNS services (had they been implemented), could have prevented 33% of breaches and saved at least $10 billion over the past 5 years.
GCA has made its mark, and we’re not done. As we move into our 5th year, we plan to achieve even greater things. Stay in touch with us, reach out and let us know if you’ve used any of the tools we’ve developed, or if you’re interested in partnering with us.
The author, Aimée Larsen Kirkpatrick, is the Global Communications Officer at the Global Cyber Alliance. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.
AIDEcybercyber securitycybersecurityDMARCDNSelection securityGCA Cybersecurity ToolkitGCA Cybersecurity Toolkit for Small BusinessGCA ToolkitIoTpartnershipQuad9risktoolkitUK
