When it comes to cybercrime, we need a ‘digital ready’ society

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There are four things about the Internet that make it a great place to commit crimes:

1. It is globally connected;

2. It is relatively anonymous;

3. There is a relative lack of traceability, and;

4. There are really rich targets – financial data, personally identifiable information, military information, business information.

So, last Friday, when Microsoft presented at a public hearing for the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications’ Inquiry in Cybercrime, we stated that alongside the incredible advances from technology comes in inevitable increase in the level of risk to individuals, business and governments.

We outlined in our testimony that the rapid advances in software, IT services and communications have enabled many traditionally separate and disparate infrastructures and business operations to become more connected and therefore more vulnerable to online crime and sophisticated cyber attacks.

What makes this scenario so daunting is global connectivity is going to continue to grow.

Here in Australia, the advent of a National Broadband Network (NBN) will spark not only a new age of communication and technology access, it will usher in a new digital economy, where governments, business and citizens will have access anywhere through ubiquitous broadband and an ever increasing array of connected devices. Indeed, we submitted that the NBN is not so much an infrastructure and communication investment, but is a major social and economic shift for the nation.

As important as the physical roll out and deployment will be, what the NBN requires is a whole-of-community change management focus to ensure we empower citizens to be ‘digital ready’ for the changes to come.

With broadband to become the dominant platform on which we transact our lives, the role for government policy, industry collaboration and community education could not be more important in building security, safety and trust into the design of the network. The NBN will change the way we live work and play and, if Microsoft’s vision of cloud computing is right, there will be more rich targets online as more and more people do more and more things in the cloud.

So, if local, national and global connectivity is going to continue to grow along with more and more rich targets, what are we going to do about cybercrime? In our view, there are four key recommendations. They are:

1. The need for a comprehensive and coordinated national strategy around cybercrime as well as greater Government-to-Government collaboration on cross-jurisdictional crime.

2. A better understanding of the threat landscape and to evolve and focus the public-private partnership model as well as international collaboration.

3. Consider a legislative model designed to ensure that greater regulation, if enacted, protects innovation while providing appropriate government oversight of cyber security issues.

4. Finally, the Internet needs an appropriately deployed identity meta-system if we are to make the Internet dramatically more secure but protect important social values, such as privacy and free speech.

For more information on our recommendations or a copy of the white paper we tabled on ‘End to End Trust’ go to https://www.microsoft.com/australia/government/publicaffairs/resources.mspx

John Galligan, Director, Corporate Affairs & Citizenship

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