NEW YORK-Nearly two-dozen financial services trade organizations, financial institutions utilities, and exchanges met in the Big Apple to announce the legal formation of Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council. The 23 groups, including CUNA and NAFCU as well as several banking and other associations, gathered in New York City to legitimize the formation of the council developed to protect the country's financial infrastructure created last June. "NAFCU is honored to be a founding member of Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council joining with other financial services organizations last June to discuss the formation and then bring to fruition the FSSCC," NAFCU President and CEO Fred Becker said of the formation of the limited liability company. "My participation in meetings earlier this week of the Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council only reinforced my belief that this type of coordination and active participation of financial service provides is vital in meeting the myriad of security challenges that face this sector of the economy which importantly includes the credit union community." FSSCC focuses on: * Effective and rapid information dissemination of threat and incident information to and from the government through the industry's Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS/ISAC). * Crisis management and response coordination to enable communication across the sector in the event of a regional or national disaster. * Outreach and organizational engagement to ensure all institutions within the sector understand the industry's critical infrastructure and homeland security objectives and responsibilities. * Knowledge sharing and best practices to leverage existing work, which can be shared across the sector to improve security and business continuity practices that protect the financial services infrastructure. The council works closely with the Treasury Department, the lead agency for financial services critical infrastructure protection, through the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee.