http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19296902%5E15319%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html James Riley The Australian MAY 30, 2006 COMPUTER security outfit AusCERT will hire additional staff after being handed an expanded role in helping protect critical federal government IT infrastructure. AusCERT general manager Graham Ingram said a landmark agreement with the Attorney-General's Department would lead to a bigger workload and a fatter budget. AusCERT is to provide whole-of-government security services to all Commonwealth departments and agencies. The agreement elevates AusCERT's role as a critical partner in the IT component of federal national security initiatives. Negotiated by Attorney-General's Department as part of its Critical Infrastructure Protection program, the agreement replaces a series of piecemeal contracts between AusCERT and individual departments. "The agreement means a much expanded role for AusCERT, and it will make things much clearer as to what that role is," Mr Ingram said. Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's office has bristled at suggestions the Government was seeking to curtail its relationship with AusCERT. It claimed the opposite was true. The department had created a tiny co-ordination team called GovCERT late last year - with one technical staff and one policy adviser - but a spokeswoman for Mr Ruddock said AusCERT remained the main resource for risk detection and assessment. "The suggestion that somehow GovCERT is a threat to, or somehow detracting from, the viability of AusCERT is simply not correct," Mr Ruddock's spokeswoman said. "AusCERT has been providing advice to a range of government departments under separate contracts," she said. "The government feels a better way of dealing with this is to have a whole-of-government approach and to have a single agency point of contact, and that's what we're trying to do." Mr Ingram said AusCERT and the department had not decided if the contents of the agreement would be made public. The creation of GovCERT would ultimately make AusCERT's role easier by giving it a single point of contact in government to deal with in case of specific threats, he said. "There are certain things that AusCERT really cannot do and would not wish to do, and that is to co-ordinate government activity," Mr Ingram said. "We can't do that. We're aiming to have GovCERT as a facilitation point in the Australian government to allow us to work much more effectively," he said. Brisbane-based AusCERT employs 20 security specialists and expects to hire more by the end of the year as a result of the deal with the Attorney-General's Department. AusCERT, which stands for the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team, is a not-for-profit organisation that provides early warning and vulnerability assessment services for private and public organisations. The team includes personnel with high-level security clearances, and has taken part in transnational, government-to-government cyber security exercises such as CyberStorm earlier this year. _________________________________ Attend the Black Hat Briefings and Training, Las Vegas July 29 - August 3 2,500+ international security experts from 40 nations, 10 tracks, no vendor pitches. www.blackhat.com
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