CYBERSECURITY SERVICES
1108. Hon TJORN SIBMA to the Minister for Innovation and ICT:
I refer to the minister's
media statement of 25 March 2022 titled ''McGowan Government continues
investment in world-class cyber security services''.
(1) What is the
proposed breakdown of expenditure for the $25.5 million allocated to expand WA's
cybersecurity services?
(2) How much has
been spent to date?
Hon STEPHEN DAWSON
replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question.
(1) The breakdown
of the $25.5 million that was allocated over a four-year period from 2021–22
to 2024–25 is $11.8 million on salaries and salary-related expenses and
$13.7 million on goods and services. The funding has been allocated to enable
the Office of Digital Government to raise cybersecurity standards across the
whole public sector through establishing the WA government Security Operations
Centre, or SOC, which launched on 1 July 2021. SOC provides security monitoring
to agencies to assist them in detecting and responding to cyber threats. To
date, 51 WA public entities are connected to SOC.
�Also through
implementing a whole-of-sector vulnerability scanning service; establishing an
uplift team to provide direct support to agencies to improve their
cybersecurity maturity; establishing a hunt and incident response team to provide dedicated incident response and threat
hunting services to agencies; and increasing
cybersecurity strategy and policy capabilities, including agency engagement,
project coordination and management of
the relationship with the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre based at
Edith Cowan University.
(2) There has been $1.7 million spent to date. The
rate of expenditure is expected to increase with a substantial number of
staff now recruited and major procurements activities completed.