Local governments urged to improve cyber security following audit findings

An audit has revealed local governments in Western Australia were still at risk of cyber attacks despite years of warnings. The investigation undertaken by the Office of the Auditor General found 473 issues across 76 entities. This is a 46 per cent increase from the 324 issues in 53 entities found last year. Concerningly, 45 per cent of these were identified as unresolved from the last report. Auditor-general Caroline Spencer said much still needed to be done to bring cyber security up to standard. “The biggest improvements have been in the categories of risk and change management, but significant improvement is still needed,” she said. “Information and cyber security remains the highest concern due to the number of weaknesses in five related categories.” The audit found access management the most problematic — accounting for more than a quarter of issues found — followed by information security framework, business continuity and endpoint security. Nearly 70 per cent of issues were identified as moderate while 12 per cent were significant and 18.5 per cent minor. Ms Spencer said local governments needed to act quickly. “The categories of highest concern were access management, endpoint security and human resource security with no entities meeting the benchmark,” she said. “Entities need to address these to protect their information and systems from security breaches.”