Businesses fend for themselves in cyber attack

A government official has said the corporate sector will need to defend itself from cyber attacks with no assistance unless the strike poses a threat to national security.

First assistant secretary for the National Security Resilience Policy Division, Mike Rothery, told ZDNet.com.au that government officials will respond to attacks based on the individual nature of each problem, rather than use a blanket defence.

“To be honest, we struggle to defend our own systems from the current threats — the idea that we can extend the envelope to protect the mining industry’s SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) or the banking industry just doesn’t fly,” Rothery said.

“The people that will defend Westpac will be from Westpac, and Telstra will use people from Telstra. It won’t be the Australian Army or Signals Corps.”

Rothery added that a defence would be initiated if the attack would affect innocent internet users.