Home Affairs Announces Funding for Health Threat Detection Platform

The Department of Home Affairs and the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (ISAC) Acceleration Grants Program will provide a grant of up to AUD 6.423 million over three years to establish an ISAC to support cross-industry threat intelligence sharing in the health sector.

ISACs provide an intelligence-sharing platform where participants interact and share information regarding cyber threats across their gateways and networks. The health sector and its suppliers hold highly confidential and personal data relating to the health and wellbeing of Australians. As the health sector continues its digital transformation, the sector must be able to respond to cyber threats as they emerge.

The aim of the program is to:

• Establish a new ISAC or scale up an existing ISAC to facilitate the ongoing exchange of threat information across health industries;

• Improving the capacity of participating member organizations to both prevent and respond to cyber threats by emphasizing their hardening and resilience;

• Establishing an intelligence-sharing forum where participants interact and share information regarding cyber threats;

• Leverage and benefit the national cyber threat picture by ensuring that any technical threat information shared at machine speed is aligned with the national cyber threat intelligence platform, the Australian Signals Directorate Cyber ​​Threat Intelligence Sharing System (ASD CTIS); and

• Establish and maintain relationships with existing threat intelligence forums to enable relevant threat information to be shared with the healthcare ecosystem.

The intended outcomes of the programme are:

• Better cooperation, information exchange, opportunities to deal with cyber threats and good cyber practices in the health sector;

• Alternative mechanisms for industry to enable cyber threat intelligence sharing between industry partners, sectors and government; and

• Establish an ISAC that will be self-sustaining after the end of the grant funding period.