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The Australian government recently announced that it is overhauling the existing cybersecurity plan started by the Morrison government. The overhaul will focus on the security and resilience of the country’s critical infrastructure and essential services.
According to the new Australian Minister for Home Affairs and Cybersecurity, Clare O’Neil, “Critical infrastructure assets are vulnerable to natural disasters and attractive targets for foreign interference, cybercriminals and other malicious actors who seek to do Australia harm.”
O’Neil added the previous year’s major incidents with Optus and Medibank exposed the flaws of the country’s cyber laws. She said that “In those events, we were meant to have at our disposal a piece of law that was passed by the former government to help us engage with companies under cyber attack.”
The minister also said the law needed to be better drafted. With the Optus incident, the government had no emergency response protocol and only acted on it because a cabinet minister was directly involved.
Prime minister Anthony Albanese noted that the government would discuss with cybersecurity experts, industry bodies, and researchers to develop more robust plans and laws. Albanese added that “the idea of bringing this group together to facilitate action and leadership across our economy, across our society to make sure we address what is a very real challenge indeed.”
The government is also looking into enhancing the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act. It aims to include customer data and systems. It will also give the government more power in intervening with significant data breaches. Other act updates will require entities to provide annual reports to the government, more robust compliance and regulatory rules, and mandatory cyber incident reporting.
O’Neil noted that revamping the act is essential as critical infrastructure assets are highly vulnerable to natural disasters and local and foreign cyber threats.
Recently, the government released an updated Critical Infrastructure Resilience Strategy, which provides a guide in protecting essential services and assets such as healthcare, water, and electricity suppliers.
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