[LINK] No Australian govt defence against cyber attacks

[Tom Worthington]

Kim Holburn wrote:
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/no-govt-defence-against-cyber-attacks-339306238.htm
> 
>> The government will not lift a finger to help businesses under  
>> attack from hackers, unless the offence presents a high risk to  
>> national security, a senior Attorney-General's policy official says. ...

The government can't respond to every incident at every business. 
Businesses need to take precautions and know what to do when attacked.

This week the US, Australia and other governments have been conducting 
exercise "CyberStorm III", along with the private sector (including 
Telstra) to test procedures. This is less about hitech software and more 
about mundane procedures, such as knowing who to contact when there is a 
problem: 
<http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/cyber-storm-3-media-fact-sheet.pdf>.

The US Defence Department recently created "United States Cyber Command"
(CYBERCOM) and Australia opened the Defence Signals Directorate's Cyber
Security Operations Centre (CSOC) in January 2010. But as several 
studies have shown, what government can do is limited:

* "Australia and Cyber-warfare" by Gary Waters, Desmond Ball and Ian
Dudgeon looks at the issue from an Australian perspective:
<http://epress.anu.edu.au/cyber_warfare_citation.html>.

* "Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar" (Martin C. Libicki, RAND) looks at it
from the US perspective: <http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG877/>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/