Filling a Cyber Security Gap to Protect Australia's National Identity - A presentation by Anne Lyons

Anne Lyons GAICD

Event Sponsor

As organisations, governments and individuals scramble to protect important data and critical information systems from cyber threats, we commonly overlook datasets that are perhaps even more valuable.

In a global environment of cyber-attacks, information manipulation and grey-zone cyber conflict aimed at disrupting nations and democracies, the threat to our national identity assets is real.

These assets are the evidence of who we are as a nation - from our electronic land titles and biometric immigration data, to the outcomes of our courts and electoral processes and the digital images, stories and national conversations we are having right now.

By far the greatest part of Australia's discourse on cybersecurity is focused on the protection of systems: the software, the hardware and the communication networks.  Thorough analysis of security threats also requires the assessment of intent and more often than not, the intent is access to data.

It's the data that needs to be protected from exfiltration, manipulation or destruction, because it's the data that underpins information critical to Australia's government and success as a sovereign nation.  To date, however, there has been very little serious analysis of Australia's critical data assets or the national policy settings required for the proper recognition and management of this important national resource.

Anne Lyons discussed the security gap around our national identity digital assets and what can be done to address that gap.

Anne Lyons joined the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in February 2018 following 12 months as a Visiting Fellow with ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre and more than 20 years as a senior executive in both the public and private sector.  Her ground-breaking ASPI report Identify of a nation: protecting the digital evidence of who we are identified the importance of digital heritage and identity to Australia's national security.

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