Peter Dutton, Australia's minister of home affairs who's leading this effort, notes in the paper that the country's new cybersecurity strategy will focus on improving the nation's capabilities and helping the nation cope with the evolving security landscape, which includes threats from cybercriminals as well as nation-states bent on cyberespionage.
Dutton notes that over the last three years, incidents such as the WannaCry ransomware attacks of 2017 as well as intrusions such as CloudHopper, where nation-state hacking groups infiltrated the networks of several cloud service providers, have increased the threats to Australia (see: Cloud Hopper: Major Cloud Services Victims Named).
"Despite making strong progress against the goals set in 2016, the threat environment has changed significantly, and we need to adapt our approach to improve the security of business and the community," Dutton notes.
Since Australia introduced its first cybersecurity strategy in 2016, Dutton notes, the government over the last three years had invested $230 million Australian ($158 million U.S.) in various improvements and updates to the country's infrastructure and security strategies, which includes 33 projects. But the paper notes that cyber incidents are costing Australian businesses some $29 billion Australian ($20 billion U.S.) each year and affecting nearly one in three Australian citizens.
"Cybercriminals are more abundant and better resourced, state actors have become more sophisticated and emboldened and more of our economy is connecting online," Dutton says in making the case for improvements in the nation's cybersecurity plan.
Areas of ImprovementThe new strategy will build on Australia's 2016 Cyber Security Strategy. As part of its public outreach, the paper poses 26 questions seeking insights ..
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