The Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, said Australia had successfully proposed at the just-concluded Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) telecommunications committee meeting in Peru that the issue be elevated for discussion at the next APEC leaders' meeting, scheduled for November in Korea.
"Committing to look more closely at what more we can do to protect critical infrastructure was a number of initiatives progressed at the [meeting]," Senator Coonan said.
Other issues covered by telecommunications ministers included doing more to "prevent the negative effects of the Internet -- particularly moves to increase protection for children and families using the Internet," she said.
Last week, the Senator asked the forum to ignore national borders and coordinate internationally efforts to curb e-mail spam and the activities of online fraudsters.
Next stop on Coonan's schedule is the Korea/Australia/New Zealand Broadband Summit from June 7 through 10. The Asian nation's fibre broadband has increasingly come under the spotlight recently as governments ponder how the delivery of next-generation digital content and services can be achieved.
In Australia, critical infrastructure protection comes under the purview of the Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN), an IT security advisory group within the attorney-general's department and composed of government and industry representatives.
In November last year attorney-general Phillip Ruddock launched a program designed to tackle potention terrorist acts against critical infrastructure in Australia. Dubbed the Computer Network Vulnerability Assessment, the program is a special project of TISN. At that time Ruddock said TISN had been allocated approximately A$50 million to assist with its operations.
