Australia mulls mandatory firewalls

A government report into cybercrime has recommended that internet service providers (ISPs) force customers to use antivirus and firewall software or risk being disconnected. security Committee chair Belinda Neal said in her introduction to the 262-page report titled "Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime" that due to the exponential growth of malware and other forms of cybercrime in recent years, "the expectation that end users should or can bear the sole responsibility for their own personal online security is no longer a tenable proposition".

A new mandatory "e-security code of practice" for ISPs is one of the key recommendations of the report, which suggested that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) and Internet Industry Association (IIA) be tasked with establishing the code under the Telecommunications Act. This code of practice would make ISPs force their customers to install antivirus and firewall software.

For more on this story, read Make zombie code mandatory: govt report on ZDNet Australia.