Defence on cyber-security hiring spree

The Department of Defence has advertised for a sizable clutch of senior IT security staff to be part of its Australian Defence Force Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) based in Canberra.

Senator Faulkner
(Credit: Department of Defence)

The roles have titles ranging from cyber-security incident manager, cyber-security analyst, cyber-network operations manager, tactical cyber-intelligence manager and more, all sitting within the CSIRT, itself a part of Defence's chief information officer group led by Greg Farr.

The CSIRT is responsible for the protection of Defence's complex technology systems — what the department refers to as its Information environment. The roles range in pay level from a minimum of $68,000 for a cyber-security analyst, all the way up to a maximum of $97,000 for a level 1 public service executive — a senior technology advisor or incident manager, for example.

The department has not yet responded to a request for comment, but the news comes shortly after Defence Minister John Faulkner opened its new Cyber Security Operations Centre in Canberra in mid-January, describing the move as a major step in meeting Defence's commitment to understand online threats.

"The Cyber Security Operations Centre will employ around 130 highly-skilled information technology experts, engineers and analysts drawn from the DSD. There will also be representatives from the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the ADF and scientists from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation as well as representation from the Attorney-General's Department, ASIO and the AFP," Senator Faulkner said at the time.

It is not clear whether the new staff will fit into that centre, which formally sits under the Defence Signals Directorate — the national agency responsible for collecting foreign signals, and historically a key government authority in terms of technology security.

It was the Cyber Security Operations Centre, for example, that worked with government agencies recently to mitigate the distributed denial-of-service attack launched against them by the loose collective of individuals known as Anonymous.

The Federal Government also operates its own computer emergency response team — CERT Australia.