Five of the biggest names in the technology industry have teamed up for a new security initiative.

The Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (Icasi) will examine ways in which multiple companies can respond to a single security threat.

Founding members of the non-profit group include Cisco, Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Juniper Networks.

The aim of the project is to deal with security threats that may affect multiple companies. The group plans to seek out better ways to cooperate and notify users in the event of an attack.

"During the past few years, common internet security threats have evolved from wide-reaching worms and viruses to more sophisticated, stealth attacks that may begin to simultaneously target multiple products or shared protocols in multiple products," the group said in a statement.

"Icasi will allow IT vendors to work together to address multi-vendor security threats."

The group will also look for ways to improve the rollout of multi-vendor security patches, and attempt to establish a better system for reporting and mitigating security flaws.

Cooperation between multiple companies, particularly in the face of a large-scale attack, has become a top priority in recent years.

Collaboration strategies were said to be one of the central themes of the recent Cyber Storm 2 government exercise.