CyberArk: Working with the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre to boost Australia’s cyber security maturity

Australian organisations operate today in an escalating and sophisticated cyber threat environment. Criminals and state-backed malicious cyber actors are targeting businesses and government organisations in the country’s most critical sectors. The impact of these malicious activities is demonstrated in the recent spate of well-publicised customer data breaches in sectors such as financial services and telecommunications. Businesses and government organisations must place cyber security as a strategic imperative. 

However, until recently, many cyber security initiatives in Australia operated in silos at the expense of broader collaboration across different pockets of the economy. At CyberArk, we believe that economy-wide cooperation developed through collaborative networks that leverage the expertise of innovators and industry leaders is key to overcoming advanced cybersecurity challenges.

Leveraging expertise

The establishment of the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre as a not-for-profit, mission-driven organisation to make cyberspace a safer arena to do business is an important step forward here. The Centre aims to leverage resources and expertise from businesses of all sizes, government and research institutions, and incubate solutions, initiatives and enablement offerings to foster a more cyber-secure, digital economy.

The Centre is housed within Adelaide’s Lot Fourteen, billed as the largest innovation precinct in the southern hemisphere, with over $1 billion in Federal, state government and industry funding. Much as leading global innovation hubs play a key role in building out mature domestic innovation ecosystems, at Lot Fourteen there is a sharp focus on knitting together a range of high-tech sectors across the economy. Cyber security is one of these verticals, with the fostering of innovation and driving commercial outcomes through to market, together with the concentrated presence of leading research institutions, technology vendors and professional services firms.

To help Australian businesses of all sizes address advanced cyber security threats and participate in collaborative initiatives to strengthen Australia’s cyber security posture, we’ve taken out a membership with the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre. When announcing our collaboration, the centre’s Director and Chairman, Kim Scott, noted the arrangement’s relevance “given the current skills and talent shortages, and challenging threat landscape, affecting all sectors of the industry.”

So what does this membership mean for our presence in this market, and our customers, partners and other stakeholders?

As a vendor specialising in identity security solutions, we are well-positioned to contribute to improvements in cyber security. Privileged access management is the foundation of an identity security offering spanning business applications, distributed workforces, hybrid cloud workloads and the DevOps lifecycle. 

Affiliation with the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre strengthens our collaboration across the Australian cybersecurity and innovation ecosystem. This will enable us to participate in thought leadership initiatives involving a wide range of diverse perspectives across the Australian economy and work hand in hand with other organisations through different initiatives to build cybersecurity capabilities. 

Second, this arrangement establishes for us a presence in the South Australian market, whereby we can host customers and partners and collaborate on solving strategic cybersecurity problems with industry and our peers in the market. This will help us meet the cyber security needs of South Australian businesses and will further cement our position as the global leader in identity security.

With this initiative in place, we are preparing to do more to inform Australian customers on how CyberArk provides holistic solutions to help them mitigate risks around data exfiltration and control access to their most sensitive assets. As a channel-first business in Australia and New Zealand, we also want to lend our expertise and work on problems and solutions more effectively with our partners in this market. 

Ultimately, our mission is to help businesses, government organisations and participants in the economy mitigate the risk of malicious parties accessing and capturing data from across their environments. At CyberArk, we are committed to building the ecosystem and fabric of the Australian economy and delivering a more cyber secure future.   

About the author: Dr Stephenie Andal is the Partner Manager ANZ, CyberArk