Page 54 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2023

54 CYBERSECURITY REDSPICE
APRIL 2023 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
will enable the hardening and defence of our national sys- tems and critical infrastructure,” she said.
“Significantly, ASD itself will be more resilient. This will be achieved by enabling the performance of our critical functions nationally and globally.”
The blueprint goes into some details about what ASD wants to achieve through REDSPICE – as well as tripling current offensive cyber capabilities, it will double persis- tent cyber hunt capabilities, quadruple its global footprint and make use of advanced artificial intelligence, machine learning and cloud technology.
challenging and unique career opportunities and generous terms and conditions.
One alluring aspect is that some ASD employees get to undertake well-resourced legal penetration of other peo- ple’s systems, that is, hacking.
Anyone aspiring to work for ASD must first be an Austra- lian citizen and be willing to undergo a very comprehensive security assessment. That obviously rules out recruiting of skilled workers from other nations.
ASD has already embarked on programs to incubate suit- able graduates. In 2018 ASD and the Australian National University in Canberra launched a joint unclassified facility for collaborative research on national security. This provides a pathway for students interested in a career with ASD.
Writing for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) The Strategist blog, Rob Kremer, Director of recruit- ment company Kinexus, said the good news was that ASD had an edge – it was attractive.
“Anecdotally, ASD hasn’t had a significant problem get- ting graduates because of a perception that it offers exciting and meaningful work in a field that will provide excellent future employment opportunities,” he said.
“ASD’s reported experience with graduates is good news, but it’s yet to be seen if it can offer the same pull factors to the experienced professionals that it will undoubtedly need to scale up its workforce.”
There, he said, it needed to take a hard-nosed look at how it would compete with other employers, especially those in the banking, IT and consulting sectors which might not require protracted and invasive security vetting processes.
INCREASED FUNDING
In his 2022-23 defence budget brief, ASPI senior analyst Dr Marcus Hellyer noted how ASD funding would increase thanks to the REDSPICE funding – by 70.8 per cent in 2022-23, 121.6 per cent in 2023-24 and 124.5 per cent in 2024-25.
That’s a lot to inject into an organisation. Historically De- fence hasn’t always been able to spend all its procurement fund- ing, typically when projects are delayed for various reasons such as technical difficulties or events of force majeure like COVID.
Hellyer said it would be interesting to see how ASD achieved that spend as the organisation needed people to both spend the money and spend it on.
“Getting that number of people through the security vet- ting process will take time,” he said.
“It’s good to be ambitious, but the Department of De- fence’s efforts to increase its workforce have achieved less than one per cent average annual growth over the past six years. So, if ASD can find a way to do it, it should bottle it and give some to the department.”
STATE-BASED ACTORS
Will Labor backtrack on REDSPICE funding? So far there’s no sign of it.
Further, the Ukraine conflict, which opened on 24 Feb- ruary 2022 with traditional kinetic attack as well as cyber- attack on Ukraine’s government and institutions, demon- strated how future wars will surely be waged.
“ANYONE ASPIRING TO WORK FOR ASD MUST FIRST BE AN AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN AND BE WILLING TO UNDERGO A VERY COMPREHENSIVE SECURITY ASSESSMENT”
WORKFORCE CHALLENGES
Most significantly, ASD wants to take on 1,900 new ana- lysts, technologists, executives and support staff across Australia and the world, doubling its workforce.
It would seem to follow that REDSPICE is a mix of some new computer technology and skilled personnel sitting in front of screens, doing pretty much what many ASD per- sonnel do now, just on a substantially greater scale.
But here’s the problem – the skilled people ASD desires are the exact same people in high demand across the IT sector, in industry, in defence companies and in the de- fence force itself. In many cases, an IT specialist can earn substantially more in the private sector.
A 2019 assessment by AustCyber, a not-for-profit body sup- ported by Government funding, forecast a possible 18,000 shortfall of cybersecurity workers within the decade.
ASD has launched an intensive recruitment drive, push- ing among much else, ASD’s family-friendly workplace with a strong commitment to diversity and social inclusion,
ABOVE: An Aviator from 87 Sqn RAAF shows ASD personnel how a 3D screen helps in the targeting progress during a familiarisation tour
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