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❓ A WA parliamentary question seeks detailed information on cybersecurity spending and incidents within the Police and Road Safety portfolios. The government declined to answer due to the difficulty and resource burden of gathering the data.

AnsweredQoN 561Legislative Assembly

Asked

25 May 2017

Member

Mr Z.R.F. Kirkup

Portfolio

Police; Road Safety

QuestionView source ↗

In respect of the Minister’s portfolio responsibilities for departments, agencies or publicly owned corporations: (a) how much money was spent on anti-virus, network security, firewall or anti-malware software in the last financial year; (b) from 17 March 2017 to 19 May 2017, have there been any reported instances of: (i) Viruses: (A) if so, what systems were affected, for how long and was there any downtime (in hours) for each system; (ii) Malware: (A) if so, what systems were affected, for how long and was there any downtime (in hours) for each system; (iii) Cyber-attack: (A) if so, what systems were affected, for how long and was there any downtime (in hours) for each system; and (B) was this attack reported to the WA or Australian Federal Police? If not, why not; (iv) DNS attack: (A) if so, what systems or websites were affected, for how long and was there any downtime (in hours) for each system; and (B) was this attack reported to the WA or Australian Federal Police? If not, why not; (v) Infected websites: (A) if so, what websites were infected / hacked, for how long and was there any downtime (in hours) for each system; (c) From 17 March 2017 to 19 May 2017 have any network files been illegally accessed by external individuals or organisations: (i) if so, what files were illegally accessed and when; (ii) if so, were the WA Police or Australian Federal Police informed of this illegal access; and (iii) if not, why not?

AnswerView source ↗

Answered

29 June 2017

Responded by

Minister for Police; Road Safety

Response time

9 days

The Government Chief Information Officer advises that this question is difficult to answer as security costs for a wide range of agencies are not necessarily easily obtainable due to external IT vendors bundling the total costs of their services to Government, of which security measures form one component. The collection and provision of this detail would require considerable time, which would divert staff from their normal duties and it is not considered to be a reasonable or appropriate use of Police or Road Safety resources to provide this information.

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