Set to be formed by April 2003 the Council will consist of the chairs of six industry groups, including telecommunications, banking and finance, emergency services, transport, energy, and public utilities. Each will group will convene separately in an attempt to identify and act upon threats faced in each sector. The council will in turn provide an opportunity for the groups work together to recommend policies aimed at the physical protection of Australia's critical infrastructure, reporting directly to the Attorney-General's department.
Designed to mitigate the risks of any interruption to the services, the council will look at ways of combating threats to both physical infrastructure, and information systems.
The council's formation is essentially the response to a series of six recommendations handed down by the Business-Government Task Force on Critical Infrastructure in April this year.
Mike Rothery, senior advisor on national information infrastructure in the office of the Attorney-General told ZDNet Australia that the government's announcement confirmed that each recommendation would be acted upon as recommended by the original task force.
"Picking up on the idea of the learning network that was recommended in April, we are going to create a trusted information sharing network, so that there will be a forum for each industry to the government its concerns regarding the services it offers," Rothery said.
In addition the Attorney-General's Department has been liaising with industry regulatory groups such as the ASX, ACCC, ASIC and APRA in order to remove the regulatory impediments to disclosure within the industry forums, so as to ensure greater levels of cross industry communication.
"We are trying to enable companies within this network to share information without the impediments often set in place by such regulatory regimes," Rothery said. "This was two banks or telecommunications companies, for example, can share information regarding vulnerabilities within their network and work together to tackle the problem."
Rothery also confirmed the Government's intention to strengthen the position of AusCERT, providing it with the funds required to set up a publicly available alert system with information regarding viral attacks and hacking incidents.
"The funding will allow AusCERT to extend its alert, advisory and incident reporting services to any business in Australia, especially those which in the past have been excluded because they could not afford the service," Rothery said. "This way it will become a basic service available to every business in Australia."
