Australia’s Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull has given the Australian cyber security arsenal $230 million, pledging Australia will enhance its defenses to become a world leader in the field. Just prior to this significant pledge, Australia’s current Children’s eSafety commissioner and newly appointed Special Cyber Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, stated that the government needs to be “more explicit” about its successes and failures in combating cyber crime. After the Prime minister’s announcement of a strategy, he confirmed that Bureau of Meteorology had been the victim of a cyber attack last year, and commended Kmart Australia for being open about its own data breach.
Part of the strategy includes imposing costs on perpetrators, working together, and playing offense.
For the first time in our knowledge, the government openly acknowledged that is does have cyber security offensive tactics, as well as defensive skills.
Cognitio’s Bob Flores provided context on the importance of public-private partnership and leadership roles for both government and industry in Australia. He has been briefing on the cyber threat to Australian industry and government as well as providing best practices across multiple sectors of the Australian economy. He was quoted in press on this topic saying that hackers’ ability to shut down key infrastructure facilities such as water and electricity posed a real threat and could cause issues affecting millions of people.
“Think about having no electricity to cook or have lights for a couple of days. Now shut off the water,” he said. “After a while there would be real panic that could affect millions.”
Now, the Australian government will be more open about future hacking attempts on the government agencies, with the encouragement of businesses following suit.
Read the full article here: http://www.afr.com/technology/government-to-reveal-more-cyber-attacks-alastair-macgibbon-20160421-gobu3k#ixzz46UKHceJN
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