The government in Australia has created a task force to strengthen cybersecurity and privacy protections as part of its pledge to keep data safe. The creation of the task force, which will focus on strengthening cybersecurity and privacy risks, comes in response to the cyberattack suffered by the state government earlier this year, according to New South Wales’ Minister for Customer Service, Emma Hogan, who is also the chair of the newly formed task force.
The breach resulted in the theft of 73 GB of data, containing approximately 4,000,000 documents, from email . The breach affected 186,000 customers.
Speaking at the Data Sharing Privacy Summit a few days ago, Hogan said the following: “Since the breach was discovered in April, we have invested heavily in cybersecurity, both to help customers recover and to understand what went wrong, how a hacker was able to access so much of the customer data they entrusted to us, and how we can ensure that something like this never happens again.”
Alongside the establishment of the group, Hogan noted that the government is working with the NSW Information and Privacy Commission to embed privacy principles into the way it “works.” She added that the government has begun to incorporate elements of privacy-enhancing technologies, but admitted that there is clearly room for more to be done in this area.
As ZDNet reports, in June, the government in Australia announced its intentions to create a new strategy , which will replace the cyber strategy that has been in place since 2018. The plan to create a new security scheme followed the commitment of $240 million to improve cybersecurity capabilities in New South Wales, including investments to protect existing systems, develop new technologies and increase the cyber workforce.
In line with this commitment, the NSW government announced it would establish a vulnerability in Bathurst, located 200 kilometres west of Sydney. This centre will be responsible for identifying, scanning and managing cyber vulnerabilities and data across departments and agencies. Of this $240 million commitment, $60 million will be spent on building an “army” of cyber experts.
