Since March 2011, DENIC is a member of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, the German CERT Association. In this forum, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERT) from industry, research as well as federal and state institutions work together to ensure security of German computer systems beyond their own borders. The Domain Name Service (DNS) for .de, with 14.3 million domains the largest ccTLD in the world, is one of DENIC's major tasks and makes the Cooperative a national center of competence in this area. Membership in the CERT forum is an essential measure to safeguard access to DNS competency and to thus further enhance national DNS security in Germany by linking networks.

The CERT Association sees itself as a forum of experts operating as a platform for an intensive exchange of experiences and as a coordination unit. CERT carries out both reactive and preventive analyses and evaluations of IT security incidences providing adequate solutions and measures. To give an example, these may include warnings against security gaps or information about IT incidents in order to shorten reaction times in emergency situations. To this end, the Association is developing a basic structure for the German IT early warning system (CarmentiS). CERT was founded in 2002. Today it has more than 30 members from most different fields: administration, German armed forces, universities, financing and insurances sector as well as companies from the automotive, telecommunications and IT industries.