Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s cyber lead says Oz could lead the way in cybersecurity

Australia could leverage the growing global cybersecurity demand and become a leader in the field, according to Brendan Hopper, general manager of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) cybersecurity centre.

Speaking at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and CommBank Australian Cybersecurity Education Summit, Hopper argued that the nation is in a primary position due to its research abilities and its host of talented cybersecurity professionals.

Hopper suggested Australia could take a page out of Israel’s book and start exporting cyber talent abroad. Oz could also leverage how much trust other countries put into it. “You’ve never heard of equipment being banned from a network because it was made in Australia,” he said, according to ZDNet.

While he acknowledged that there is some top-notch research being made in Australia, Hopper suggested more needed to be done to commercialize that research.

Cybersecurity has grown over the past few years to become a prime concern for business leaders. However, few believe that their digital defences are strong enough to protect, them, according to research from Microsoft.

It is easy to see why as there is a constant wave of new ransomware flooding the internet, threatening to wreak havoc on businesses. Moreover, old viruses, like the WannaCry program that attacked hundreds and thousands of computers worldwide in 2017, are still lingering around.

Given the growing threat, it is easy to see why cybersecurity has become a lucrative sector over the past few years. RegTech Analyst’s own research into the RegTech sector’s funding has showed that tge proportion of cybersecurity investments grew from 14.4% to 20.9% between 2014 and 2018. It jumped to 42.6% in the first six months of 2019.