The New South Wales government has established a new chief information security officer role. The GCISO will sit within the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation (DFSI) but have a mandate that crosses departments and agencies.
“The position oversees cyber security for all of NSW government and reflects the importance NSW government places on boosting cyber security and protecting information and service delivery for citizens and businesses of NSW,” a spokesperson for the department told Computerworld.
“In addition to the existing security measures in place within government agencies, this role will provide whole of government leadership in cyber security,” the DFSI spokesperson said.
“It will ensure the prevention, detection and response to cyber incidents are sufficiently developed and streamlined across NSW government.”
The new NSW role is separate to the DFSI’s CISO position. Marco Figueroa was appointed DFSI CISO earlier this month, after being systems security lead at Coca-Cola Amatil for over seven years.
The government is currently recruiting for the new GCISO role.
Tasmania’s government is also seeking to fill a newly created CISO role.
The new government CISO will work with security teams across state agencies and department. He or she will be a central point of contact for collaboration with other jurisdictions and industry, the spokesperson said.
The CISO will report directly to Damon Rees: The government’s chief information and digital officer. Rees — a former Macquarie Bank chief digital officer — was .
Rees holds the senior technology role within the state’s public service and reports to the DFSI’s secretary.
Earlier this month the federal government announced it would offer a cyber security briefing to a number of Australia’s political parties in order to help boost their information security.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the minister assisting the prime minister for cyber security, Dan Tehan said they would offer a briefing from the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to leaders of a number of parties.