The Computer Awareness, Support and Assistance Center (APA) was established at the Cyberspace Research Institute of SBU.
This center has been established as one of the partner centers of the National Center for Computer Incident Management and Coordination in line with the memorandum concluded between the Cyberspace Research Institute of SBU and the Information Technology Organization of Iran.
Dr. Hadi Soleimani, faculty member and head of the Department of Network Security and Cryptography of SBU has been appointed as the director of this center.
The word APA stands for Agahiresani (awareness), Poshtibani (support) and Emdad (assistance), which is a local name equivalent to CERT or CSIRT. APA project has started its activity since 2005, and became operational in late 2007 in the Research Institute for Communication Security and Information Technology of Iran Telecommunication Research Center in order to improve the country’s technical knowledge and develop knowledge of security incident management. The mission of APA focuses on the specialized research aspect of disaster response management.
The Computer Awareness, Support and Assistance Center (APA) was created considering the existing capacities of the Cyberspace Research Institute of SBU, including dynamic and active faculty members, necessary infrastructure, equipment and facilities, and the importance and necessity of setting up and expanding partner centers for diagnosis, analysis, and national coordination in response to computer security incidents.