CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team, is an organization formed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to respond to security incidents. CERT was formed in November 1988 in response to the "Internet worm" incident that disabled approximately ten percent of Internet systems. The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) is located at the Software Engineering Institute's research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The charter of the CERT is to work with the Internet community in detecting and resolving computer security incidents, as well as taking steps to prevent them in the future. Examples of Internet security incidents include attempts to gain unauthorized access to a system or its data, disruption of service, and changes to system hardware or software without the owner's knowledge or consent.

The CERT/CC is a single point of contact for...