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Australian cyber security environment short on ‘expertise’?
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
ONE OF THE BIG ISSUES with cyber security in Australia is the lack of expertise.
Jason Baden, F5’s regional vice-president for Australia and New Zealand, said the situation in Australia was so critical that cyber criminals were targeting secondary schools. He said this meant that every organisation, large or small, needed to be cyber aware, because they’re carrying personal data.
“The level of skill sets and requirements for security now has increased across all companies,” Mr Baden told Talking Business.
“Anywhere that has personal information that could be a target, with any criminal looking to get into an organisation, they’re going to look for the weakest link.
“Now what that means is that every single person will have to have a great security posture.” 
Pay attention now
Mr Baden said this was particularly pertinent now, when people were making mistakes all the time, clicking on any link and responding to emails sent out by cyber criminals.
This meant that organisations needed to prioritise cyber education for all staff.
“From an F5 perspective, we look after the application from an enterprise level but every organisation needs to ensure they’ve got great education because there are phishing links, all types of areas where they can be contacted,” he said.
This means the cyber security education needed to be across everyone in the organisations, at all levels.
“Every single person in the organisation is responsible for cyber security,” Mr Baden said.
“Previously with cyber security, companies would leave it to their IT teams, the networks team, to the cyber team.
“As we’ve continued on, we’ve seen much more of the business CEOs, the CFOS, they’re much more interested in what they’re spending their money on and what are they getting for that money and where is that going and will that cover them off.”
Mr Baden said one of the challenges with cyber security was locating where applications were being hosted to ensure their security. Potentially every bank, government instrumentality or telco would have their own applications.
“We manage security for multiple different companies and the way that occurs is that the major banks, the major governments, the telecommunications companies all have different ways of delivering those applications, whether it’s to pay your bills, whether it’s to get information and the most important thing is wherever that sits, you are able to make sure you’ve got that security portfolio covered across all those areas,” Mr Baden said.
Listen to cyber specialists
To address the skills shortages in cyber security, Mr Baden said, “there can never be enough” specialists, so a lot of companies are now turning to SAAS (software as a service) solutions for global threats.
“Now if you don’t have all those skills sets and you can leverage someone who’s hot on SAAS, then if there is a threat anywhere across the world, that can be replicated into your security portfolio before you can be attacked,” he said.
In Australia, Mr Baden said, there was a requirement for company directors to be aware of cyber security. That was part of the board governance today.
He said with all the brand damage now being done by cybercrime – for companies like Optus, Latitude and Medibank – companies have been investing heavily in cyber security over the last five years.
“What it does is it brings it back to the fact that these high-profile breaches have meant that nobody wants to be called on that, so everyone is investing to make sure they can avoid that,” he said.
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
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