What Australia can learn from global conflict to safeguard against cyber threats

Cybersecurity agencies in Australia, the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand (Five Eyes) have released a joint statement on the cyber risk posed by artificial intelligence. An RMIT expert explains how Australia should prepare itself against this future threat.

Distinguished Professor Matthew Warren, Director of the RMIT University Centre for Cyber Security Research & Innovation:

"The Five Eyes cyber agencies joint statement is important because it warns us that AI is rapidly transforming cyber risk and accelerating the speed, scale and sophistication of attacks.

"The impact of AI reframes cyber resilience as a core leadership and business responsibility. World leaders are being urged to act now; get the basics right, patch faster, and prepare for inevitable breaches.

"The conflict between Russia and Ukraine confirms that effective cyber defence is a whole of society endeavour with industry and individual professionals, not solely a government undertaking.

"Ukraine could resist cyber invasion because it had prepared well in advance: the government and private companies had built strong working relationships through years of reform, citizens were actively involved, and local industry pitched in.

"Western tech companies also played a big role. Firms like Microsoft, AWS, Google, Cloudflare, Cisco, Palo Alto, and Starlink supplied vital technology, helped track cyber threats and kept the country connected.

"For Australia, trusted cyber relationships must be built before a crisis occurs.

"We need to consider a national public-private cyber partnership model, relationship management for multinationals, a national Australian cyber reserve and developing deeper European ties to learn from their lived experience."

Distinguished Professor Matthew Warren is director of the RMIT University Centre for Cyber Security Research and Innovation. He is an expert in cyber security and computer ethics.

Cyber Security-Partnership between Defence, Society and Private Companies, with co-authors Matthew Warren, Adam Bartley and Aiden Warren is published by The Australian Army Research Centre (DOI: 10.61451/2675149).

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