Mike Burgess fronting a parliamentary commitee when Telstra CISO. (Image: ParlView screenshot by Josh Taylor/ZDNet)
Government officials have outlined their priorities for Australia's cybersecurity efforts following a major reorganisation of the country's cybersecurity agencies. These include a national assessment of Australian cybersecurity, and collaboration with major internet service providers to address known problems.
"The time for incremental shift is over," said Alastair MacGibbon, the National Cyber Security Adviser and head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), at the ACSC Conference in Canberra on Wednesday.
"We're doing things faster, and with more ambition to achieve change for the Australian people, and for the Australian economy. It doesn't come without some pain, but it comes with an amazing opportunity for us to achieve those changes."
MacGibbon said that "bumps in the road" have led to changes in strategy since the Australia's Cyber Security Strategy was launched in 2016.
"The first one came pretty quickly in August 2016 with the eCensus falling over from some very small denial of service attacks. Very small. But that led to the discussion of resilience, and what happens when government systems don't perform the way the public rightly expects them to perform," he said.
"That helped change the political dialogue in this town very, very significantly, and the pressure on us to deliver resilient systems."
Following the recommendations of the 2017 Independent Intelligence Review[1], the ACSC is moving from the Attorney-General's Department[2] (AGD) to the Department of Defence, and will become part of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), taking with it CERT Australia and a "small contingent" from the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).
Meanwhile, on 1 July the ASD will become