​Business push for cyber-sec cooperation continues

The bid for greater cooperation between the Australian government and business is continuing with another major technology player declaring its willingness to share intelligence with federal agencies.

For a second time in as many months it’s come from the telco sector with Vodafone Australia declaring its prepared to share information with the government to tackle via its new cyber defence centre to has established through an industry partnership.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia yesterday announced it had partnered with Dimension Data and threat intelligence specialists Fire Eye to establish a Cyber Defence and Response Centre (CDRC).

The CDRC will monitor and respond to security threats around-the-clock in a bid to protect the carrier’s enterprise customers.

VHA’a technology chief Kevin Millroy said that the CDRC would readily share intelligence with federal authorities.

“The capabilities, maturity, flexibility, and scalability of Dimension Data and FireEye enables us to be ready and open to exchange threat information and knowledge with the federal government’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, and ultimately contribute to protecting Australia’s national security and economic prosperity from online threats,” Mr Millroy said.

VHA said that the partnership would purportedly be valued in the millions over next five years.

The decision to open the CDRC and share its intelligence with government appears to follow a trend among carriers.

Early last month Optus announced that it would spend $10 million on a new Advanced Security Operations Centre (ASOC).

At the time, Optus business chief John Paitaridis said cybercrime was “the number one economic crime in Australia” and that it was “unrelenting and growing and with increasing online and digital presence”.

Mr Paitaridis also called for greater business and government cooperation to tackle the problem.

The two carriers’ stances are in line with views that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s chief information officer David Whiteing aired after the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) released a report which found that businesses were being too secretive about threats they faced.

According to Fairfax Media, the report was widely considered a little light-weight among cyber security experts, adding little to the bank of knowledge already held information security experts. However, Mr Whiteing defended its findings for raising awareness and the need for more private sector support from the Australian Signals Directorate.

The report emerged shortly before the federal government introduced mandatory data breach notification laws into parliament after it was hit by long delays in the hands of both Labor and Liberal governments.