Australia to build six 'cyber shields' to defend its shores Australia will build "six cyber shields around our nation" declared home affairs minister Clare O'Neill yesterday, as part of a national cyber security strategy. Detailed in a speech before a summit on cyber security, the strategy's six "shields" comprise: Education so that businesses and citizens are informed about the …
The minister's goal is that "just as you can't go into a car yard and buy a car that will not be safe to use, when you buy a digital product on sale in our country we know that it's safe for you to use";
I feel like this will be the hardest one of all - given that anything powerful quickly becomes unsafe.
It's a false analogy, though. There are plenty of used car places selling dodgy, unsafe cars. Every day, all over the world.
If the minister insists on using car analogies, the minister needs to pick a better one. Still, this is from the country that insisted laws of parilament override laws of mathematics.
"They’ve millions of the things..."
Sadly, the number of great whites worldwide is estimated to be far less, ranging between thousands to tend of thousands, although it's very difficult to get a good estimate. Probably not that different for other large, apex-predator sharks.
So if you're talking sharks generally, millions might be right, but if you want a shark strategic deterrent, that's not really going to work.
Claire O'Neill spake thusly: "...Critical infrastructure protection...Sovereign infosec capability..."
Yes, of course....
And every other country in the world will be saying the EXACT SAME THINGS......
.....because every other country knows that the Five Eyes countries have "critical attack capabilities".....
.....but, of course, that's not mentioned by Claire O'Neill....it's just the un-named "seventh" cyber capability....
My first reaction was a pang of sympathy for whatsername (recently appointed ... it was in the news too ... can't remember) the new Productivity Commission person. I mean, MORE painful dogma from the growing hordes of security-wallahs, in lieu of actual risk analysis and appropriate mitigation? <sigh!> But then I went to their website to look her up, and found the org chart from Ben Hur. <sigh!> Oh well, I guess a bit more creative tension keeps more people employed.
It's easy for us in the industry to be cynical, but I do think it's a good thing that the Australian government are taking cyber security seriously - or talking a good game at least. The challenge will be balancing the controls with western liberal values such as freedom of speech - not easy, especially as you are working with tools that can easily be used for nefarious purposes - who knows what the next government will do with them? I guess you have to make sure new cyber powers go hand in hand with a very strong regulatory and oversight framework.
Yes, it's easy to be critical of stated ambitions that are infeasible and vague, but at least it's an attempt to move in the right direction.
In the US, the Federal government has issued hundreds of these sorts of statements, and only a handful have led to actual progress – but a handful is better than none.
Certainly this is more sensible than some past Australian governmental meddling in this area.
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