Darren Goldie will be the nation’s first co-ordinator for cyber security.Credit:Defence
Goldie will be backed by a National Office for Cyber Security within the Department of Home Affairs to co-ordinate work across the government to respond to cyber hacks and threats.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil will announce the appointment on Friday after a four-month search for candidates.
The appointment of Goldie comes after a long and distinguished career in the Royal Australian Air Force which he joined in 1993. In his current role Goldie has been responsible for ensuring the Air Force is ready for combat.
The government is responding to ahack attack on Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth,which counts Australia’s four largest banks and government agencies – the Department of Human Services and Medicare – as clients.
The attackers – a Russian-linked criminal gang known as BlackCat,or AlphV – stole extensive data from the law firm in April and claim to have published 1.45 terabytes of its data on the dark web.
Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the new cybersecurity co-ordinator should have been in place in March,as the government originally promised,before the attack on the law firm.
“The co-ordinator’s first task must be to get to the bottom of what government data has been lost in this attack and be transparent with the public about it,given the Albanese government’s failure to do so,” Paterson said.