Canberra: The Social Cyber Group has reacted to the Crowdstrike fiasco causing network outages around the world by reasserting its position that cyber incompetence is a major cause of insecurity in cyberspace.
‘In incidents like this, companies and government authorities rush to reassure the victims and the public that there was no cyber attack’, said Greg Austin, Director of the Social Cyber Group’s advisory service. ‘This is cold comfort when hospitals from the US and the UK to Israel have been affected, however temporarily. Let’s know the economic costs and death tally, if any, before we brush it off as a glitch’.
In 2019, the Social Cyber Group called out cyber incompetence as one of five causes of insecurity in cyberspace that could only be properly addressed through stronger emphasis on social science approaches to the challenge. The other four were technical insecurity, ignorance, intransigence and insensitivity. ‘All of these five I’s are on prominent display in Australia’s cyber ecosystem’, Austin said.
The 2019 paper, ‘Creating Social Cyber Value’, represents the founding ethos of the Social Cyber Group. The US and Australian intelligence agencies have promoted more attention to social sciences in addressing security challenges around modern technology. Two leaders of the Social Cyber group participated in the Australian study.
‘Social dependency mapping, rarely undertaken in Australia, is an important feature of planning for outages caused by cyber incompetence’, Austin said.
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Our senior researchers have decades of experience in advising government from inside and outside, often at senior levels, and working with business leaders to address their research needs. Their clients have included the UK Foreign Office, the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK Cabinet Office, the European Commission, the New South Wales government, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Director General of National Intelligence, and the Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.
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