Displaying items by tag: ASD

Company News: Snowflake, the data cloud company, today announced it has completed an Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) assessment confirming that Snowflake's Data Cloud has achieved the Australian Government security status of 'Protected' on selected deployments.

Samsung Electronics has announced that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has released an "updated Security Configuration Guidance" that includes a range of new Samsung Galaxy devices which can now be used by Australian government departments and Critical Infrastructure agencies.

Quite surprisingly, with the issue of new guidelines for secure cloud services, the talk among government functionaries has turned to promotion of local companies as being more suited for this role locally than foreign firms.

New guidelines have been released by the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Digital Transformation Agency to enable the adoption of secure cloud services across the public and private sector.

Former Independent senator Nick Xenophon has put the cat among the pigeons, pointing out that while Chinese vendor Huawei has been banned from supplying gear to the 5G networks, Telstra, which gets its 5G gear from a joint-venture arrangement between Ericsson and Panda Electronics, faces no such strictures.

The head of an Australian cloud company says the new arrangement for awarding contracts for hosting of top-secret government data have advantages over the older one where there was a fixed list of companies certified by the Australian Signals Directorate who could cast their hat in the ring and tout for business.

The Australian Government will on Tuesday announce a funding boost of $1.3 billion over the next 10 years for offensive cyber security operations in the wake of accusations by the authorities that China is increasing its cyber focus Down Under.

Macquarie Telecom business unit Macquarie Government has become a member of the Defence Industry Security Program (DISP), certifying the company to contract with the Department of Defence.

A number of researchers have detailed four major vulnerabilities in the Australian Government's COVIDSafe application for the iPhone and Android systems, and advised users to upgrade at once.

The Australian Department of Defence will use Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to host SAP/4HANA which will form the foundation of its new enterprise resource planning system.

Questions have been raised over the fact that the American cloud provider Amazon Web Services, which was given a Federal Government contract to store data collected by the government's COVIDSafe app, is using a data centre in Sydney which is fully owned by a Chinese company.

If Australians had any doubts that the government has a tin ear when it comes to privacy concerns, those would have disappeared after its choice of Amazon Web Services as the company which will store data collected by the COVID-19 contact-tracing app that was announced on Sunday.

The Australian Information Industry Association has expressed concerns that proposed changes to the way in which cloud providers are certified for government contracts could affect cloud adoption by federal government agencies.

The Australian Signals Directorate's decision to withdraw from the role of certifying cloud providers to handle government data at sensitive and classified levels means that cyber security is being put at risk, with each provider now having to act as their own regulator.

The Australian Signals Directorate will cease to be the regulator for cloud providers who aspire to be certified for government services with effect from Monday. The decision, announced by the ASD and the Digital Transformation Agency on Monday, comes after a review that began in July 2019.

Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief executive Michael Phelan have both played down suggestions that the Australian Signals Directorate could be given expanded powers to carry out domestic surveillance in order to help track down people who are indulging in sexual abuse of children.

ASD-certified Protected cloud provider Vault has switched on high-security equipment in the NSW Government's GovDC in Silverwater, the company says, adding that this would provide fast low-level connectivity directly into Vault Cloud.

ABC journalists' ignorance of technology has been on display once again, with senior broadcaster Patricia Karvelas displaying an acute lack of knowledge during an interview with former senator Nick Xenophon, whose legal firm has been hired by Huawei to help correct misconceptions about its operations.

Some members of Parliament proved to be the worst enemies of their own network when they opened the door to malware by visiting an external website that had been compromised, it has been revealed.

An infection of Windows systems by the Emotet malware was the precursor to the recent ransomware attack on Victorian hospitals, the Australian Cyber Security Centre says, as part of a warning that Emotet, which has been around since 2014, is being spread in Australia by malicious emails.