Guidelines for the Membership Application Process

Applicant Team Responsibilities

  • Undertake background reading on FIRST
  • Address any questions to the sponsors and/or the named shepherd
  • Address any issues as required that are raised during the sponsorship process
  • Make information available to the sponsor to facilitate the sponsorship process
  • Complete application form Appendix_A and supporting letter under the sponsor's guidance

FIRST Representative Responsibilities

Normally the FIRST representative is someone with an operational role in the team, usually the operational incident response team manager.

  • distributing the FIRST PGP quartely key to the team members;
  • voting at the AGM and other such meetings;
  • providing updated team contact info for the web site;
  • commenting on new membership applications that are circulated;
  • confirming who the current members of their team are;
  • responsible for reviewing e-mail to the first-reps list;
  • ensuring that their team keeps FIRST-sensitive information confidential.

Application Cookbook

  1. Find 2 sponsoring full FIRST members. A good opportunity to find them is attending the annual FIRST conference.
  2. The sponsors should announce the upcoming application to FIRST Secreteriat Services (FSS). FSS will name a shepherd - a member of the FIRST membership committee, who will help the applying team and the sponsors throughout the whole process.
  3. Fill out Appendix A. The sponsors and the shepherd will help if there are any problems. You will have to name a FIRST-Representative (rep), a member of the applying team. The rep will represent the whole team, especially during the Annual Grand Meetings (AGM) of FIRST. You'll also need at least two diffrent pgp-keys: the personal key of the rep and one for the whole team (team-key).
  4. Get your pgp-keys (rep-key and team-key) signed by the sponsors.
  5. Write an application letter stating that you want to join FIRST, and the benefits you want to bring to FIRST.
  6. One of the sponsors conducts the site visit. We highly recommend to use the site-visit document prepared by Damir Rajnovic and CERT-CC.
  7. Both sponsors write a letter introducing and recommending the applying team for a FIRST full membership. The sponsor who did the site visit should mention that in his letter, a detailed report on the site-visit would be much appreciated.
  8. One of the sponsors submits the whole package (Appendix_A, the 3 letters, the pgp-keys) in signed and encrypted email to first-sec@first.org.
  9. The FIRST membership committee will review the application. If the review does not identify issues the membership committee will recommend to accept the application.
  10. The whole application is sent to all FIRST-members and the FIRST Steering Committee for review together with recommendation of the membership to accept it. After at least one week the Steering Committee will vote on the application.