Councils’ bid to make public spaces safer

As authorities confront violence against women in Australia, experts raise fresh doubts about the utility of CCTV, often a key tool for councils.

22 October, 2018

Time to review airport security, expert says

Australia’s airport security framework lacks coordination and is in urgent need of review, a leading security expert says.

18 October, 2018

Warning for councils on CCTV data risks

A privacy expert is calling for a national review by councils of the public safety benefits of CCTV cameras after an audit found surveillance data were vulnerable to privacy breaches.  

5 October, 2018

Australia ‘wide open’ to damage from cyberattack

Governments must move quickly to address a potentially catastrophic cybersecurity vulnerability, a state government chief information security officer has warned.

14 September, 2018

Local government ‘the forgotten actor’ in thwarting terrorism

As authorities confront an increasingly localised terror threat a security expert calls for greater council involvement in Australia’s counter-terrorism planning.

3 September, 2018

Collaboration key to a national cybersecurity strategy

The public and private sectors need to work together to improve cyber resilience through sharing insights, intelligence, expertise, facilities, and personnel.

30 August, 2018

Agencies need better training on terrorism: police commander

Few police or emergency services are adequately preparing their staff to respond to major terrorist incidents, an Australian Federal Police commander has warned.

8 May, 2018

NSW lacks coherent plan on cyber security: audit

The NSW Auditor-General has called on the State Government to ramp up cyber security after she found most agencies had untested response procedures, poor reporting of incidents and questionable staff training.

5 March, 2018

Public sector least prepared for cyber attacks

Governments at all levels are much less prepared for cyber attacks than organisations in the commercial sector. Security software vendor CyberArk has released its ‘Global Advanced Threat Landscape Report 2018’. Its 11th annual study of cyber security and organisation’s response to it. Responses are broken down by industry sector, giving a clear view of how […]

1 March, 2018

Data notification law starts today – as Privacy Commissioner says goodbye

Timothy Pilgrim, retired public servant The world is very different now, but many of us don’t know it. From 22 February 2018 Australia has a new Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) regimen. Under the laws, passed in 2017 as the Privacy Amendment (Notifiable Data Breaches) Act, companies and government agencies have to tell people  if lost […]

21 February, 2018

Thousands of government websites hacked

A UK computer consultant has discovered that thousands of websites around the world have been hacked by ‘miscreants unknown’ and put to work mining the Monero cryptocurrency. Those infected include many government sites in Australia. UK security researcher Scott Helme discovered the hack and went to UK computer publication The Register, which broadcast the incident […]

12 February, 2018

Governments to increase spending on cloud, cybersecurity and analytics

Gartner’s Rick Howard Leading IT analyst group Gartner predicts that cloud computing, cybersecurity and data analytics will be the top technology spending priorities in the public sector CIOs in 2018. And data centre infrastructure will be the most commonly targeted technology for cost savings. A global Gartner survey of government CIOs found that 16 percent […]

1 February, 2018

Open data – too much sharing, too little care

Who’s reading your health information now? There can be benefits from sharing health and other personal information among health care professionals and researchers. But any such sharing must be based on an understanding of potential risks. It must occur only within an effective legal framework, with controls appropriate for those risks. A ‘Trust me, I’m […]

8 January, 2018

Australia to trial world first city surveillance system

Australian cities will be a test bed for ‘next generation security’ systems that will combine live video with advanced real-time analytics for a level of surveillance impossible with current technology. ICT vendor NEC Australia, a major supplier of biometric software to government, has partnered with Silicon Valley vision analytics startup CrowdOptic to develop the technology. […]

13 December, 2017