Deloitte launches Australian Cyber Intelligence Centre

Deloitte has this week launched the Australian chapter of its 24/7 Cyber Intelligence Centre, aimed at sharing intelligence with 27 other countries to provide a global front against cybercrime.

According to Deloitte's Asia Pacific cyber risk leader James Nunn-Price, the model employed by Deloitte in its worldwide Cyber Intelligence Centres differs to what is commonplace when it comes to combating cybersecurity, basing the model instead around international collaboration.

"Most organisations have one big security operations centre and they put all their data into that centre and employ people in that area who might be multilingual," Nunn-Price said.

"Our operation is different as we've realised people who are in the country will know more about what's going on in their country more than those who are not and they will speak the local language, know the local customs, and they will understand themes of the day in that region."

Nunn-Price said Deloitte's model is centred on leveraging intelligence generated from its centres around the world and sharing with them as well.

"By collectively operating a network of shared services Deloitte is able to combine global threat intelligence and local delivery at economies of scale with unique insights that individual businesses cannot readily achieve on their own," he said. "We think this is a really unique way of sharing that intelligence."

He said sharing information between entities like government and the private sector is not without its challenges.

"What we have done, and being very careful how we set up our operation is around rules of engagement and what can and can't be shared in different jurisdictions," he said.

"For example we get very detailed intelligence from some countries whether it's the US, UK, or Interpol, with very tight sharing arrangements. What we do is take the substance of that, take away all the background and what it is they need to look for, we are able to share."

Nunn-Price also said that cyber risks cannot be completely eliminated, but they can be actively managed.

Deloitte risk advisory managing partner Harvey Christophers said the increase in dependency on technology has made cybercrime a massive threat to productivity. He believes it is a big productivity play for an enterprise to make sure it has cybersecurity in place.

"It's about making sure you've got a correct response in a controlled environment that doesn't impact on productivity," Christophers said.

"It is about a responsible response; investing in vigilance, not just firewalls."

Christophers believes in the need to accept that things are going to get through internal networks, as he said attempting to protect it 100 percent is going to be cost-ineffective and heavily impact on productivity.

"This is a bigger than just Australia issue," he said.

In September, Gartner said it expects worldwide security spending to reach $75.4 billion in 2015; Deloitte expects this to grow to $170 billion by 2020.