Have your say in improving Internet security

Stuart Corner
Monday, 14 September 2009 06:48

IT Industry - Strategy

The draft code, available from the IIA follows a meeting on 10 June convened by the IIA in association with the Government, ISPs, security vendors and consumer representatives "to explore the merits of a new voluntary eSecurity code so that there will be a fair and uniform approach embraced with the aim of reducing malware infected systems."

The meeting agreed to produce the code, initially as a public for comment draft, with the aim of having the final version in place by 1 December 2009.

However the origins of this initiative go back to 2005 when the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) initiated a pilot Australian Internet Security Initiative (AISI) drawing on the cooperation of initially six ISPs. These ISPs were alerted to zombie-like behaviour, detected by ACMA monitoring, that could be traced to their account holders.

According to the IIA, this pilot data sharing led to a more effective reduction in malware-infected systems. It was followed by an allocation in the 2007 Federal Budget of approximately $4.7 million over four years to enable the expansion of the AISI to all Australian ISPs wishing to participate. IIA says that 68 ISPs have joined the AISI programme, and some 10,000 compromises are being detected every day.

Members of the public can respond to the draft code by posting their comments and suggestions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by Friday 30 October.