Today the Australian Government has confirmed what we suspected for a long time, that we have the capability to launch a cyber attack. Why would Australia want to do that? Well in defending a countries assets, you can no longer rely on physical military forces as the threats are often digital and are not protected by our island borders.
There’s $230 million of new funding to assist in defending our country, with nearly $39 million of that to build a new home for the Australian Cyber Security Centre that will work the private sector to assist them in protecting corporate sensitive data.
International cyber warfare is well understood on the global scene with many sophisticated attacks in the US being suspected state-sponsored attacks from China, Russia or others. So with the announcement that we indeed have not only defences, but a capability to attack others, we’re backing Australian technical skills against those around the globe, theory being that sometimes the best defence is attack.
Like shows of military forces, fighter planes, friggates, submarines, its important to let the world know we can defend ourselves, but launching an attack should take a seriously high level of justification, authorised by the highest levels of Defence and Government as the repercussions could be enormous.
More information at ABC.
