Australia Unprepared for Cyber Attacks!

The head of cyber security at BAE Systems Australia is calling for expanded training for cyber security experts in Australia; he believes that there is a lack of proper training and there must be greater cooperation between the government and the private sector; a government report finds that the Australian government is underprepared for cyber security threats; in February 2010 hackers brought down the government’s main site and the parliament's homepage for two days

Tim Scully, the head of cyber security at BAE Systems Australia, recently pointed to the dramatic need to increase training in cyber security in Australia.

In an interview with iTWire, Scully said, “There are a lot of people out there who could do the work but the problem is they need serious training and there is a dearth of formal training that would get them up to the level where they can be credibly employed and where clients will be happy to take them on board.”

Scully urged for more cooperation between the private sector and the government to put a greater emphasis on training.

He says that universities offer a good foundation for cyber security experts, “but industry needs to start building the capability to provide more education and training in cyber security.”

Scully’s calls to bolster cyber security training come on the heels of a government report that blasts the Australian government for not being adequately prepared for cyber attacks.

The report concludes that Australia is at “a tipping point where the current trajectory of cyber responses is being rapidly outpaced by the evolving threat.”

According to UPI, more than a million Australian computers are attacked by malicious hackers each year. The Australian Defense Department receives more than 200 attacks on its networks each month.

The report goes on to say that,”A large part of the Australian population doesn’t comprehend the scale of the growing cyberthreat nor the potential impact of that threat on personal and national wellbeing. That lack of understanding, and therefore commitment to addressing that threat, is a fundamental weakness in the individual and collective security of Australians.”

In February of 2010 hackers around the world brought down the Australian government’s main site as well as the Australian parliament’s homepage for two days.

The group responsible for the attack, Anonymous, announced that “government websites will remain down as long as we can keep them down. That could be anywhere from a few hours to a few months.”

The attacks came as a protest against the Australian government’s decision to introduce a broad national Internet filter that would block access to sites that included material like rape, drug use, bestiality, and child sex abuse.



(HSNW)