Created by the Interministerial Ordinance Nº 147, of May 31st 1995 and altered by the Presidential Decree Nº 4,829, of September 3rd 2003, the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee is responsible for promoting the technical quality, innovation and the dissemination of the offered services.

Since July of 2004, the representatives of the civil society are chosen democratically to participate directly in the deliberations and to debate priorities for Internet, among with the government.

Members of the CGI.br

The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee has 21 members, as follows:

• Nine Federal Government representatives
  • Ministry of Science and Technology;
  • Ministry of Communications;
  • Presidential Cabinet;
  • Ministry of Defense;
  • Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade;
  • Ministry of Planning, Budget and Management;
  • National Telecommunications Agency;
  • National Council of Scientific and Technological Development;
  • National Forum of Estate Science and Technology Secretaries.
• Four representatives of the corporate sector
  • Internet services providers;
  • Telecommunications infrastructure providers;
  • Hardware and software industries;
  • General bussiness sector users.
• Four representatives of the civil society
• Three representatives of the scientific and technological community
• One Internet expert

Attributions

Among the diverse responsibilities of the CGI.br, the main attributions are:

• to propose policies and procedures related to the regulation of Internet activities;
• to recommend standards for technical and operational procedures for the Internet in Brazil;
• to establish strategic directives related to the use and development of Internet in Brazil;
• to promote studies and technical standards for the network and services' security in the country;
• to coordinate the allocation of Internet addresses (IPs) and the registration of domain names using <.br>;
• to collect, organize and disseminate information on Internet services, including indicators and statistics.

Activities

The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br maintains working groups and coordinates several projects in areas of fundamental importance for the Internet operation and development in the country. In order to execute its activities, the CGI.br has created a non-profit civil organization named Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br).



Since 1995, the Registro.br executes some of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee attributions, such as the activities of domain names registration and the administration and publication of DNS for the <.br> domain. In the beginning of July 2005, there were 785,000 domains registered in the country. Registro.br also provides the services of distribution and maintenance of Internet addresses. For LACNIC - Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Register, Registro.br offers the services of engineering and hosting.



The PTTMetro (PTT- Internet Exchange Point) is the project of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee that provides the necessary infrastructure for the direct interconnection between the diverse networks that operate in a metropolitan region. PTT is maintaining exchange points in regions of the country that have big interest in exchanging Internet traffic, as São Paulo, Brasília and Rio de Janeiro, interconnecting commercial and academic networks with a centralized management.



Internet security is one of the major concerns of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, that maintains since 1997 the CERT.br - Brazilian Computer Emergency Response Team. Besides incident handling, CERT.br offers support to network administrators and Internet users in Brazil, writes documents in Portuguese about network security and produces statistics about security incidents and spam. It also maintains an early warning project with the goal of identifying new trends and alerting Brazilian networks involved in malicious activities. CERT.br works to increase the security awareness, acts in the correlation of events in the Brazilian Internet and helps the establishment of new Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) in Brazil.



The Security Best Practices for Internet Users, developed by CERT.br, is a compendium of concepts, best practices and tips to the final user. In this document the users can find information about virus, worms, fraud, vulnerabilities and best practices for system configuration.



Antispam.br is a website maintained by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, and constitutes a neutral and technically sound reference source about spam. The most important commitment of this site is to inform users and network administrators about spam, its consequences, and which are the means to protect against and fight it.



The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee works in a national project of developing indicators for the Brazilian Internet and have information on the website about the network growth in the country. It also offers some electronic directions for surveys about Internet in the world.



The Brazilian Internet Steering Committee's working groups - the GTER - Network Engineering; the GTS - Computer Security; and the GTRH - Trainning of Human Resources - have been created to provide technical, administrative and operational input for the decisions and recommendations made by CGI.br. Their members meet in periodic events and through mailing lists.

Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br
E-mail: info@cgi.br