South Australia Premier Steven Marshall officially opened the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre (A3C) at South Australia’s innovation precinct, Lot Fourteen, in the heart of Adelaide.
Established through a $10 million investment by the State Government in collaboration with UniSA, Flinders University and companies such as BAE Systems Australia, Optus and Dtex Systems, amongst others, the A3C is expected to bring together education, industry and business sectors to make South Australia the nation’s leader in cyber security.
Premier Marshall said the A3C will support the development of a cyber workforce for global businesses that can establish cyber teams in South Australia to take advantage of the state’s world class research, education, market reach and lower cost environment.
“South Australia is now driving the growth of Australia’s cyber industry, creating high-tech jobs and generating significant interest from interstate and overseas,” Mr Marshall said.
“Cyber security and resilience are increasingly becoming front of mind for the business community and COVID-19 has created further awareness due to working off-site arrangements, which are likely to continue in unprecedented numbers.
“As the recent Australia wide cyber attacks show, threats to businesses, governments and essential systems are not theoretical – they are here, they are already happening, and we must ensure we have the right people, skills and infrastructure to head them off.”
“The A3C is set up as a place where businesses can come to get advice and build their skills and workforce capability.”
A3C CEO Hai Tran said the A3C houses the Cyber Training Academy and a Cyber Test Range, physical spaces for collaboration and cyber infrastructure to support product testing and training.
“The Cyber Test Range will be used to carry out security testing of equipment or network configurations in the knowledge that networks are safe from interference,” Mr Tran said.
“The Range will also provide capabilities for SMEs, researchers and government to collaborate. It will allow cyber security devices, software and techniques to be introduced into the environment for certification, or standards-based testing to be performed, to help get products to market.”
BAE Systems Australia CEO Gabby Costigan said cyber security for the defence industry supply chain ‘is critically important on two fronts’.
“The first is the cyber security of a SME’s business systems and the second is the cyber security of their products before being incorporated into our platforms,” Ms Costigan explained.
“Our participation in the A3C aims to develop strong relationships with key industry, academia and researchers to help us find solutions to complex problems.”
“We will support the ASC Shipbuilding Hunter Class Program with a focus on developing cyber capability within Indigenous owned businesses.”
“A3C will also develop a strong talent pool of cyber professionals that we will need to draw upon in the future for our nationally important defence programs.”
