The government is setting up a three-day course through TAFEcyber that is intended to produce people skilled in assessing how well their organisation has implemented Essential Eight security controls.
The face-to-face course “will teach participants how to conduct accurate and consistent Essential Eight maturity assessments”, according to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC).
The targets for the course are personnel employed by “government departments, critical infrastructure, and industry”, according to a separate statement.
Maturity assessments are currently fraught, particularly in government where self-assessments of maturity often materially differ from an independent assessment, such as by an auditor.
Differences in assessed maturity levels can be seen across federal and state government levels, for example.
The TAFEcyber-delivered course, which will be delivered nationally from next month, could be a way to produce more standardised self-assessments of maturity around the implementation of Essential Eight controls.
The government said the course had been piloted at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) Reid. It did not say how many people had gone through the course in its pilot phase.
In a statement, minister for skills and training Brendan O’Connor and minister for cyber security Clare O’Neil indicated they wanted to seed Essential Eight skills in a broad range of organisations.
The course is not only about assessing the current state of affairs with respect to maturity, but also preparing people to be able to “define an action plan to address any weaknesses.”
At scale, the upskilling program could help the government deliver on its pledge to make Australia the most cyber secure nation by 2030.
“Using a blend of specialist expertise and hands-on technical training, this course will give cyber professionals the skills to assess their organisation’s cyber security posture and get in front of threats that inflict significant financial loss and intrusion of personal information,” O’Connor said.
O’Neil said the course “will put key cyber security skills in workplaces across our country.”
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