With the scale and reach of malicious cyber activity affecting Australian public and private sector organisations and individuals becoming unprecedented, the Australian Prime Minister has reiterated the need for the country to boost its cyber defence capabilities.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has promised a $156 million investment to enhance Australia’s cybersecurity strategies if his party is returned to power next month.
The investment is aimed to protect older Australians, small businesses and national security assets from the risk of cyberattacks.
“As the risk of cyberattack increases we need to ensure Australians are protected and our defence forces and capabilities continue to get the backing they need,” Mr Morrison said in a press release.
“We will continue to take a proactive approach against cyber criminals at home and overseas,
including scammers, fraudsters and those involved in child exploitation.”
As part of the $156 million cyber resilience and workforce package, the government aims to:
• Invest $50 million to create a Cyber Security National Workforce Growth Program to create
the cyber workforce we will need in the decades to come.
• Invest $40 million to establish a Countering Foreign Cyber Criminals capability within the
Australian Cyber Security Centre, and drawing on the expertise of the Australian Federal Police
to combat the increasingly sophisticated organised cybercrime gangs.
• Invest $26 million to support the Australian Cyber Security Centre to expand its assistance to
the community in the fight against malicious cyber criminals and actors.
Currently, cybercrime costs the Australian economy more than $1 billion annually, particularly impacting families and small and medium sized businesses.
"The Coalition’s $156 million investment will enhance the national cyber security workforce and
capability, which will have broader flow-on benefits across the entire economy," the press release stated.
You can find the entire press release here.
The announcement of this policy comes on the same day as the launch of a new report from The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), which found that phishing was the number one reported scam in Australia last year.
Our team at MailGuard applauds the renewed focus on boosting Australia's cyber defence capabilities via this $156 million cyber resilience and workforce package.
MailGuard is one of Australia’s leading technological innovators and the world’s foremost email and cloud security service, providing complete protection against web and email security threats such as malware, ransomware, spyware, phishing, spear phishing, viruses, spam and similar malicious scams in 27 countries around the world.
Benchmarking shows that when a new threat emerges, MailGuard is consistently between 2 hours and 48 hours ahead of the market, which includes global security giants, in preventing fast-breaking zero-day attacks. Keep up to date on the latest email scams by subscribing to MailGuard’s weekly update or follow us on social media.
