While the Government’s newly launched cyber strategy was broadly welcomed, industry representatives voiced concerns about the adequacy of planned investment and how responsive the Government was to share its information at the International Cyber Security Conference at CeBit 2016 in Sydney this week.
Responding to First Assistant Secretary (Cyber Policy and Intelligence Division) Lynwen Connick’s address about the opportunities and challenges emerging from the strategy costed at $233.1 million over the next four years, Australian Iinformation Industry Association’s CEO, Rob Fitzpatrick queried whether it measured up to similar overseas programs.
“There’s been a lot of discussion about the $US5 billion the US is spending on cyber security and the 1.9 billion pounds that the UK is spending. Is there a sense that the scale we are investing right now could be stepped up either further?” Fitzpatrick asked.
Connick responded that the $233.1 million was complemented by the Defence White Paper’s $400 million over 10 years to improve Defence’s cyber capabilities.
“It is building on a very strong base,” she said. “We invested early in cyber security capability in Australia. We have world class capability already.”
These initiatives were implemented “on top of what we have already” she added. “I’m sure our investment in cyber security will keep growing.”
During the panel sessions, the issue of how well the Government shared its threat intelligence emerged as well.
“We give our security information to the Government, but nothing ever comes back,” Service Delivery Manager, HAMBS, Derek Grocke volunteered.
Grocke expressed disappointment about the thin and not very topical responses received by Government cyber security agencies to date and how little it had contributed to his company’s capabilities.
Questioned about progress on implementing the Strategy’s “online cyber threat sharing portal”, Connick said “they are going to start working on that very soon.”
“It would begin with a pilot with one of the threat sharing centres in the regions,” she said.
“At the same time we’ll be working on the online portal. It will be similar to the UK model where organisations can subscribe and join communities of interest to get information about threats. [The] Australian Cyber Security Centre and [those portals] in capital cities will put up information as well.”