The Australian and South Korean governments have pledged to deepen cooperation on cyber security.
At a '2+2' meeting today South Korea's foreign minister and defence minister, Yun Byung-se and Han Min-koo, and their Australian counterparts, Julie Bishop and Kevin Andrews, signed a blueprint for defence and security cooperation between the two nations.
"The Meeting reaffirmed the importance of the Korea-Australia partnership, based on common values and shared interests," said a statement issued by the ministers after the meeting.
"It identified, through a new Defence and Security Cooperation Blueprint agreed today, avenues for continued cooperation in a wide range of areas, including defence cooperation, counter-proliferation, transnational law enforcement, cyber security, border security, crisis management and maritime safety."
The blueprint commits the two sides to biennial foreign and defence minister meetings, as well as annual foreign ministers' meetings and defence ministers' dialogues and annual defence policy stalks and strategic dialogue talks.
The document seeks to boost defence cooperation including through regular service-to-service dialogues, exercise participation, peacekeeping cooperation, defence cooperation agreements and logistics cooperation.
The top-line areas of "activity or proposed activity" for defence cooperation include cyber security and space security.
"Australia and the [Republic of Korea] will continue to hold a bilateral cyber-policy dialogue, meeting regularly to address common cyber threats and contribute to international efforts to ensure open and secure cyberspace including discussions on international norms on cyberspace," the blueprint states.
The document commits the two sides to deepening cyber security collaboration under already existing arrangements between KrCERT/CC and CERT Australia, including information sharing.
"Both sides will also continue to pursue increased regional and global collaboration on cyber security, including through the multilateral Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team (APCERT)," the document states.
The nations will also seek to deepen cooperation between the Cyber Bureau of the Korean National Police Agency and the Organised Crime and Cyber portfolio of the Australian Federal Police.
"Australia and the ROK will continue to work together to develop international norms for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace, and in outer space," the ministerial statement on the blueprint says.
"The two countries will also cooperate on taking forward risk reduction and conflict prevention measures in cyberspace, and to increase awareness of the importance of space security issues, including in the ASEAN Regional Forum. Computer Emergency Response Teams will cooperate under their working agreements and cyber areas of the respective law-enforcement authorities will further strengthen their collaboration."
The next 2+2 meeting will be held in Seoul in 2017.