CYBERATTACKS
457. Mr W.R. MARMION to the Minister for Innovation and ICT:
I refer to the massive cyberattack
by a sophisticated foreign-based state actor, which was brought to our
attention by the Prime Minister. Can the minister outline to the house which
government agencies and businesses have been targeted and were any of these
attacks successful?
Mr D.J.
KELLY replied:
I
thank the member for the question. The Western Australian state government was
given a heads-up by the Prime Minister that he was going to make some
comments about cybersecurity last Friday. It was clear to me from the briefings
that I received that the comments that the Prime Minister was going to make
were not related to a new specific
cyberattack; rather, he was simply going to highlight to the Australian
community the current heightened risk. The state government has been aware from
the briefings that it has received that there has been increased activity of
this nature for months so although what the Prime Minister announced to the
Australian community may have sounded and come as a bit of a shock to some
members of the Western Australian community, it was not a shock to the Western Australian
government because we have been monitoring this situation in recent times. It
was nothing new to us. It is common knowledge among state governments and,
frankly, business that significant state actors out there are, for whatever
reason, testing the defences of governments and corporations. There have been a
number of well-documented and well-reported private sector cyberattacks in
recent times, and so really the Prime Minister was trying to alert the
Australian community to the need to be vigilant, especially when everyone is
focused on the health pandemic and organisations can drop their guard on
cybersecurity. We know that we have to do both. We have to deal with the health
pandemic but, at the same time, we do not want to drop our guard. Despite the
Prime Minister's comments,
there have been no specific breaches. I am very pleased with the progress that
we have made on cybersecurity issues since we have been in government. For the
first time, there is a dedicated cybersecurity unit within the Office of Digital Government, which has permanent funding
and full-time equivalents who are dedicated to cybersecurity. State government agencies are constantly batting
off cybersecurity attacks—it is constant. Some of them are automated little bits of trouble that are wandering around
the net looking for any weakness they can find, while others are specifically
motivated by organisations trying to cause trouble. It happens all the time.
Although the Prime Minister's comments on Friday were dramatic in the
eyes of the general public, the state government has been continuing to address
this issue. We can never be completely sure that someone will not breach our
defences, but I am pleased that we are at least making progress with some of
the best minds in Western Australia looking at this issue for us.