Cybercrime threatens digital economy progress, warns ACS

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 15:52

Business IT - Security

Parakala also says that the current security frameworks are not proving effective in meeting current and emerging security threats, which he adds, “ultimately impacts the growth of the digital economy.”

According to the ACS a number of factors are influencing and enabling cyber crime, including State-based funded cyber activities, organised crime activities, lack of public, business and government awareness of the full extent of cyber crime activities making cyber crime easier to conduct, secrecy surrounding victims of cyber crime and its “extent and impacts which is often linked to a fear of public loss of confidence and consequent loss of business”, and no regulatory basis for the registration and control of ICT security professionals and other practitioners managing national and business critical IT based infrastructure.

While applauding the recent federal government announcement to establish a Cyber Security Operations Centre, Parakala said the ACS believed that to achieve the best outcomes, it should work collaboratively with industry and other cyber safety agencies such as AusCERT, GovCERT, Austrac and Crimtrac to “ensure cooperation and information sharing to achieve the best results and maximum leverage from the resources devoted to cyber crime in Australia.”

ACS esecurity task force chair, Prof Vijay Varadharajan said the ACS wanted the Government to consider developing agreements with vendors to ensure that computer systems and mobile devices are not sold without supplying adequate e-security and cyber safety information that covers current and known emerging threats.

Varadharajan said the ACS would like to see vendors embrace secure development applications (SDA) more fully on a voluntary basis and in accordance with internationally agreed standards, which he says “would allow users to purchase products that comply with international secure development applications standards.”