Displaying items by tag: Australian Signals Directorate

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.

Only a quarter of Commonwealth entities have implemented the top four cyber security measures recommended by the Australian Signals Directorate six years after they became mandatory, an auditor's report says.

The Telecommunications Sector Security Reforms, put in place just after the Turnbull Government was toppled in 2018, have hit Huawei Australia hard, with the company losing 900 direct jobs, more than 1500 sub-contracting jobs and $100 million in R&D in Australia, the company claims in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry.

A review of Australia's intelligence agencies has recommended that the law governing the activities of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation should continue to distinguish between foreign intelligence and security intelligence.

Exactly why the Federal Government has decided to upgrade the COVIDSafe app after its abysmal showing as far as contact tracing is concerned is a mystery.

Six Australian intelligence organisations have "incidentally" collected data from the COVIDSafe app, according to a report from the watchdog, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, issued on Monday.

The Australian Government-owned defence industry lobby group, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, appears to have spent oodles of American money on studies that are virulently anti-China, raising serious doubts over Canberra's claim that it has not picked a side in the battle for supremacy between the two global giants.

Canberra-based cloud provider Vault has told the government it has serious concerns that the data and cloud sector has no regulator even though it is the country's most critical infrastructure sector as it links to all critical infrastructure sectors.

Canberra-based secure cloud services provider Vault has welcomed the release of new guidelines for vendors to be assessed for their competence in delivering secure cloud services by either public or private sector entities.

The defence industry lobby group Australian Strategic Policy Institute is acting to ratchet up tensions with Australia's major trading partner China and using funds it gets from the Federal Government for this purpose, more than $20 million at last count, the Australian arm of the Chinese telecommunications equipment company Huawei Technologies says in a strongly-worded blog post.

The only logical conclusion that one can draw from the latest inspired effort from the defence industry lobby group, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute — calling for ISPs to provide a clean Internet — is that the good people at this institute have been smoking some very strong stuff.

The defence industry-funded lobby group, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has many shortcomings. But it has numerous strong points too, chief among which is its unceasing ability to spread misinformation, propaganda and heighten the fear index in society.

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 Federal Government departments are unlikely to meet a September deadline set by the Department of Home Affairs to migrate their data from a company that is now totally Chinese owned to a new data centre.

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.

Former Royal Australian Navy officer Abigail Bradshaw has been appointed as the chief of the Australian Cyber Security Centre.