WA earmarks $25m to cyber uplift, builds ‘hunt and incident’ response capability

WA Cyber Uplift

The WA Government has earmarked $25.5 million to expand the DPC’s Office of Digital Government’s cyber capability, with ambitions to build the state’s “largest dedicated cybersecurity team”.

The funding boost, which is drawn out of the $500 million Digital Capability Fund, will, the Government hopes, give the state “world-class cyber capabilities”, facilitating “secure data exchanges between agencies and [helping to] prevent, detect and respond to contemporary cyber threats and risks”.

The Government will also look to inject new blood into the state’s Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) – first launched back in late 2020 with an initial $1.8 million investment – with the CSOC now recruiting for a number of senior cyber roles.

Among these roles include senior cyber security analysts, a senior security tester, cyber uplift manager, and a threat hunting and critical incident response manager.

“The significant growth of cyber services offers technical and non-technical employment opportunities to WA’s cyber security sector, and will also build skills across agencies to support their digital transformation journey,” the Government said in a statement.

Expansion of the CSOC, which sits under the Office of Digital Government’s Cyber Security Unit, remains a key priority under the state’s Digital Strategy Roadmap 2021-2025, with plans to have at least 30 WA Government agencies hooked into its services by the end of Q2 2022.

Within this timeframe, the Office of Digital Government also hopes to establish a dedicated Cyber Security Uplift Team, tasked with uplifting agencies’ cyber posture, as well as a new Hunt and Incident Response Team to “proactively identify risk and help agencies manage incidents if they occur”.

“Cyber threats continue to evolve, and so by investing in our world-class Cyber Security Operations Centre, Western Australians can be assured important Government services they access will continue to be safe and their information will remain secure,” said Innovation and ICT Minister Stephen Dawson in a statement.

“The Office of Digital Government is leading and coordinating digital transformation across government to improve service delivery for all Western Australians.

“I encourage all qualified cyber security individuals to apply for these important roles within the State Government.”

As part of the Roadmap, the Government hopes to further the capabilities of the Office of Digital Government to help agencies boost their resilience against cybersecurity incidents, such as large-scale data breaches and disruption to government infrastructure, systems and services.