Tasmania to invest $4.9m to expand cyber program

The Tasmanian Government has committed $4.9 million over four years to develop its Whole-of-Government Cyber Security Program as part of its $135.4 million investment in government IT service delivery.

The funds will be used to expand the cybersecurity program, which seeks to help the state government more rapidly detect and mediate vulnerabilities in Tasmanian government services.

The expanded program will also include support for government departments to train staff to better recognise threats that may occur in their day-to-day work, as well as a cybersecurity upskilling program for the state’s public sector.

As part of these efforts, the government will soon advertise for additional experts to the Whole-of-Government Cyber Security Team as part of a recruitment guide.

“The Tasmanian Liberal government is determined to protect our information and ICT systems from malicious cyber activity which is increasing in frequency, scale, sophistication and severity,” Tasmanian Minister for Science and Technology Michael Ferguson said in a statement.

“The expanded program aims to reduce the impact of malicious actors and aid rapid remediation by detecting vulnerabilities in Tasmanian government services at the earliest opportunity, further integrating our incident response capacity with national arrangements.”

The $135.4 million ICT investment also includes $57 million for the Digital Transformation Priority Expenditure Program, $21.6 million for the Human Resources Information System upgrade in the Department of Health, and $46 million for Project Unify in the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Michael Evans