The Hon Kevin Rudd MP Minister for Foreign Affairs made a powerful impression at Woodford. He addressed a huge audience in The Grande. He received a huge welcome was listened to with great attention and received great applause. He spoke about the global challenges facing Australia. I only want to mention one here because it was also front page news in The Australian: Cyber-attack. The Kokoda “Optimising Australia’s response to the cyber challenge” study says there is a growing threat from state and non-state actors who compromise steal change or destroy information and information systems upon which societies depend. It is very difficult to identify the source of attacks; often they can be routed through other countries or other players. State actors non-state actors private hackers or terrorist organisations these are all risks. An estimated 1m computers in Australia or 20000/week are being compromised by viruses partly because people are not doing basic housekeeping to protect their computers from attacks.
The report written by strategic consultant Gary Waters and former RAAF deputy chief John Blackburn finds that Australia has reached a ‘tipping point where the current trajectory of cyber responses is being rapidly outpaced by the evolving threat. A large part of the Australian population does not comprehend the scale of the growing cyber threat nor the potential impact of that threat on personal and national wellbeing. The lack of understanding and therefore commitment to addressing that threat is a fundamental weakness in the individual and collective security of Australians. It warns that the threat could endanger critical infrastructure such as electricity grids water sotrage and distribution aviation and maritime transport and telecommunications networks.