GCSB wants to give ISPs more power to block cyber threats
The agency recorded 338 cyber security incidents in the last year, up from 109 a year prior.
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The Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) wants to give internet service providers more information and power to block cyber threats.
The communications-focussed spy agency has recorded 338 cyber security incidents in the last year, from 190 a year earlier, which director Andrew Hampton said was due to both the number of threats increasing and the improved system picking up more threats.
Cyber threats to New Zealand are "becoming more complex and their sources more diverse" with a "growing range of international actors targeting New Zealand organisations for financial gain," Mr Hampton says.
Public and private organisations are targeted for their intellectual property, new technology, customer data, business and pricing strategies and positions on sensitive topics, he says.
The agency is also looking to increase the information it gives to ISPs from Cortex, a system aiming to disrupt advanced cyber threats to organisations of national significance in both the public and the private sector.
"We've increased cyber security services to organisations of national significance through Cortex, with the consent of the organisations involved," Mr Hampton says, adding the agency responded to 69 notifications of network changes in areas of security interest in the year.
"More broadly Cortex is a big focus, but our regulatory role under the TICSA Act (the Telecommunications Interception Capability and Security Act 2013) is important because that helps us with telcos to ensure they're not inadvertently introducing vulnerabilities into the system," he says.
"We're wanting to evolve Cortex to provide more information to other parties such as ISPs so they can do some of the blocking on our behalf. An obvious benefit is it gets the security agency out, dealing with public concerns about privacy, but also increasing the ability to scale."
(BusinessDesk)
Sophie Boot
Wed, 07 Dec 2016
Wed, 07 Dec 2016
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GCSB wants to give ISPs more power to block cyber threats
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