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The Australian Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee, Australia’s leading representative body for cyber security, has urged the government to improve its game to set a better example for businesses and customers. The country’s leading industry advisory body on cybersecurity identified the toughening of public sector systems as the top priority for the near term.
The recently released Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee (CSIAC) Annual Report 2022 discloses that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) blocked 180,000 malicious domain names under its new powers to safeguard official systems.
The blocks come as part of the Protected Domain Name Service (AUPDNS), a government-wide DNS system that locks out known ‘bad’ domains and malicious actors.
According to the CSIAC research, Business Email Compromise “has become Australia’s most financially damaging cybercrime.”
“Although BEC [Business Email Compromise] incidents are almost certainly underreported, the ACSC Annual Cyber Threat Report 2020-21 informed Australians that they had lost $81.45 million to BEC in the 2020-21 financial year. Over 2,300 suspected BEC incidents were reported to ReportCyber between 1 January 2022 and 30 June 2022,” says a CSIAC researcher.
This compares to $442 million in online payment card fraud calculated by AusPayNet, an enormous yearly increase of 12.3 % attributed to merchants but not mentioned in the study.
The news and study come as Labor attempts to rapidly reframe the Morrison government’s $10 billion, the ten-year plan outlined in the previous Budget, which has industry and agencies wondering how Treasury can forecast such a complex problem so far into the future.
The report’s release couldn’t have come at a better time after Clare O’Neill’s recent announcement of an impending cyber shake-up.
It welcomes the supposed reset, notably creating a single cybersecurity portfolio in the cabinet, although specific blanks still need to be filled in.
“In light of Australia’s constantly evolving cyber threat landscape, it is now time to update and expand upon the 2020 Australian Cyber Security Strategy,” the report from the CSIAC says. “The Committee looks forward to continuing to work with government to achieve effective, resilient, and agile cyber security outcomes for all Australians.”
“This approach should serve as a model for future governments and private businesses who seek to establish similar strategies. We, therefore, applaud the Cyber Security Minister’s decision to use this lens to create a broader National Cyber Strategy; this will be essential in developing and protecting Australia’s sovereign capacity.”
The Australian Cyber Security Industry Advisory Committee report indicates that the government needs to improve its cyber security efforts to set a better example for businesses and customers. The country’s leading industry advisory body on cybersecurity identified the toughening of public sector systems as the top priority for the near term. We hope this report will serve as a wake-up call for the government and prompt them to take action to protect Australia’s cyberspace better.
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