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Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil has announced that the government will be launching a range of exercises designed to combat the increasing number of cyber attacks targeting critical infrastructure.
Minister O’Neil warned that Australia must prepare for a “dystopian future” in which threat actors and organisations will hold entire digitally connected cities to ransom.
“[A future where] our interconnected cities are held hostage through interference in everything from traffic lights to surgery schedules,” she said in a speech at Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Sydney Dialogue yesterday (April 4).
In response, the government has unveiled a series of exercises that will protect critical infrastructure, which in future may be targeted by cyber attacks using quantum decryption.
“This exercise series will build muscle memory in how to deal with a cyber attack and importantly cover the types of incidents we have not yet experienced on a national scale such as a lock-up of critical infrastructure or integrity attacks on critical data,” said Minister O’Neil.
“Critically, it will look at how to work with governments, including dealing with the consequences of a crisis that inevitably will not impact just one company but potentially millions of Australians.”
The minister has said that attacks on Optus, Medibank and, most recently, Latitude are just the “tip of the iceberg”.
Minister O’Neil called out state-sponsored advanced persistent threats (APTs) as the “apex predators” due to their extensive scale and sophisticated tools, and she said that they “can be the hardest threat to tackle, demanding the full spectrum of our brightest minds and deepest technical knowledge to detect and deter”.
However, she reiterated that “public enemy number one” are threat actors who are financially motivated.
“These groups subvert legitimate business models for financial gain, creating online portals for ‘hacking as a service’ where anyone can purchase the tools and support necessary to conduct a cyber incident or data, especially in the form of a ransomware attack,” she said.
Minister O’Neil has previously stated that with the new cyber security strategy that is being created, she hopes to make Australia a hostile environment for hackers and the safest cyber nation by 2030.
A number of policies have already been implemented already, including the establishment of a 100-strong task force of cyber experts to “hack the hackers”, as well as increased penalties for businesses that suffer from serious or repeated breaches from $2.2 million to whatever is the most of:
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