Italian aerospace and defence company Leonardo has an ongoing strategy of support to Australia with a specific focus on cyber projects following the Australian government’s recent announcement that it would spend A$1.35 billion over the next decade to enhance the nation’s cyber security and increase its resilience to future attacks. This financial boost represents the nation’s largest ever investment in cyber security and will be delivered through the Australian Signals Directorate and the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
This major investment announcement follows a coordinated state-based attack in June that targeted Australian government agencies and businesses across a range of sectors. The attacker managed to exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in Telerik UI and services such as Sharepoint, Microsoft Internet Information Services and Citrix and used traditional spear-phishing methods to try to extract login information from employees inside an organisation.
On 1 July, the Australian government also released its 2020 Strategic Update and 2020 Force Structure Plan that outlined heavy investments will be made toward sharing information reliably and securely across Defence, other government agencies and with international partners. In particular, Australia is converging its electronic warfare and cyber capabilities combining land, sea, air, cyber and space – a trend reflected in the recent Cyber and Electromagnetic Activity (CEMA) doctrine and the scope of the School of Information Operations (SOIO).
SOIO is a collaborative venture between major aerospace, defence and security company Leonardo and Australian company DEWC T&E. DEWC T&E is an organisation staffed entirely by former military electronic warfare and cyber practitioners that delivers electronic warfare services in to the Australian Defence Force (Army, Navy, Airforce and Space Domains) and its allies. The training school is seen as a key cyber and electronic warfare capacity building by the Australia government and it was officially opened in February 2020. Leonardo is supporting SOIO to deliver cyber defence capabilities to the Australia Defence force.
The Leonardo SOIO partnership is also collaborating with CyberOps, which is a lead cyber SME in Adelaide. CyberOps has been instrumental in developing the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre (A3C) cyber range which launched on 6 July 2020.
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