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Australia Builds Secret Database to Fight Cyber-Terrorism


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Cyber Security Operations Center

The Australian Government receives sensitive data from utilities, banks and other organizations for the Critical Infrastructure Protection Modeling and Assessment (CIPMA) program. The Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), shown here, opened in January.

Credit: The Canberra Times

Australia's federal government has been given sensitive data from utilities, banks, and other organizations for the Critical Infrastructure Protection Modeling and Assessment (CIPMA) program. "Identifying, tracking the cascading effects of [critical infrastructure (CI)], and quantifying these consequences is a key rationale for establishing the CIPMA program," says a spokesperson from the Federal Attorney General's department. "Direct relationships with industry means that there is a high level of trust to enable the provision of accurate data for modeling and analysis."

Approximately 4 terabytes of CI data will be warehoused in central databases, making it unnecessary to retrieve information from knowledge experts who may not be accessible in a disaster. System dynamic models are employed to analyze stock and flow data in CI, such as network connectivity and the energy output of generators, to produce an amalgamated output to be fed into a People, Building, and Infrastructure profile. Data is then deconstructed into demographic, economic, and business profiles, and into statistical divisions to generate novel disruption footprints.

The CIPMA program is one of numerous actions that authorities have recently taken to counter increasing numbers of cyberthreats.

From Computerworld Australia
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Abstracts Copyright © 2010 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

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