Melbourne City
The Federal Government is eyeing further collaboration between industry and the public sector following the launch of its second Joint Cyber Security Centre in Melbourne.
The new centre, which was officially opened on 11 October, comes roughly eight months after the Government launched its inaugural Joint Cyber Security Centre in Brisbane.
The Brisbane centre was viewed as the first stage of a $47 million program piloting collaborative work spaces where industry, government and law enforcement work together to share relevant threat information.
Now, the new centre in Melbourne will capitalise on the concentration of cyber expertise in the region, the Government said. It is expected to provide up-to-date information about cyber threats, and help business and government better understand cyber risks and respond to them.
AS with the Brisbane centre, the new facility in Melbourne is being led by CERT Australia, and includes representatives from the Australian and Victorian governments, as well as law enforcement agencies and businesses responsible for critical infrastructure and systems of national interest.
More Joint Cyber Security Centres will be established in Sydney and Perth by the end of 2017, the Government said, with work also underway on an online information sharing portal to broaden the reach of the centres and support the timely sharing of cyber security information across Australia.
The new centres come as the Federal Government, local private sector players and research organisations pool more than $139 million worth of investment into a new cyber security cooperative research centre (CRC).
The Government revealed on 22 September that it will invest $50 million over the next seven years to establish the Cyber Security CRC, the latest such cooperative research centre in the Government’s initiative to better collaborate with industry.
The Government’s funding is set to complement more than $89.8 million in investment – both cash and in-kind – from a total of 25 industry, research and government partners.
“This investment will contribute to Australia’s reputation as a secure and trusted place to do business, enabling industry to attract and increase investment, trade and commerce and delivering broad economic benefit,” the Federal Government’s Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Craig Laundy, said in September.
The country’s growing number of Joint Cyber Security Centres will be closely linked to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) which, on 10 October, released its latest annual Threat Report, revealing a growing occurrence of private sector IT services providers and IT security firms being targeted by malicious cyber attacks.
"Also worthy of highlighting has been the global campaign by advanced adversaries to compromise some private sector providers of ICT services, including ICT security” the report stated.
“Some managed services providers and ICT providers around the world, including in Australia, have been compromised by these adversaries,” it said.
