Oceania

Metadata: Australia’s Cyber ‘Sitting Ducks’

Recent Features

Oceania

Metadata: Australia’s Cyber ‘Sitting Ducks’

Australia’s data retention policy comes with glaring cybersecurity risks.

Metadata: Australia’s Cyber ‘Sitting Ducks’
Credit: Pixabay

It has been almost two years since the Abbott government passed into law what became colloquially known as the Data Retention Bill.” Since then, all Australian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have slowly been building huge datasets of the internet activity of every Australian internet user. There are, however, significant security flaws in the policy, which leave large pools of sensitive personal information insufficiently secured. These severe oversights in the policy require urgent attention for the sake of Australias National Security.

At present, telecommunication service providers are required to collect and store the metadata of all users under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. The current policy dictates that this data be encrypted and protected from unauthorised interference or access. However, it leaves the choice of encryption method, as well as the storage location, up to the individual private service providers. This results in significantly large pools of sensitive Australian metadata being insufficiently secured and at risk of cyber attack.

[...]
Dreaming of a career in the Asia-Pacific?
Try The Diplomat's jobs board.
Find your Asia-Pacific job