AustCyber fund recipients announced

Seventeen industry-led projects will receive a nearly $8.5 million boost from the AustCyber Projects Fund ­– a $15 million, three-year initiative designed to help the Australian cybersecurity industry grow both locally and globally.  

“The Projects Fund is one of our key mechanisms used to identify and support cybersecurity innovation through to commercialisation in Australia, complementing projects funded through industry, research organisations, and other government initiatives,” said Michelle Price, AustCyber’s CEO.

The first round of AustCyber’s Projects Fund provided $6.5 million in matched funding to 10 industry-led projects, with a total contribution of some $35.8 million dedicated to growing Australia’s cybersecurity sector.

For this round of the initiative, several projects will build on completed projects from the first round such as the development of the Intelligent Trust Evaluation System (ITES) by Quad IQ to dramatically reduce the time to complete security vetting and a platform by Locii that improves online safety.

There are also projects that will address skills shortage in the sector: Alpha Beta will develop an interactive heat map of demand and supply for cybersecurity jobs by states and metro areas across Australia, while Fifth Domain seeks to provide a variety of training experiences to optimise job readiness through an integrated, virtualised learning platform.

Cynch Security will deliver and study the impacts of cyber risk interventions by applying the Cynch Cyber Fitness platform to tailor programs for small or micro businesses. Meanwhile, Serinus Security will develop a threat analytics platform focused on insights into safe WiFi areas and identify malicious WiFi trends and behaviours globally.

Regional areas will also be supported:

• Penten will provide fly-away kits to a pilot group of regional SMEs and academia so they can access their own classified IT networks on a scalable, multi-tenant service; and
• Amplify Intelligence and Gallagher’s cyber safety service will be trialled by 100 small businesses to measure cyber risks derived from critical datasets from both an external and internal view of their risks.

Additional projects include:

• AARNet developing a Security Operations Centre service to help institutions to monitor, detect, and respond to cyber threats;
• Airlock Digital commoditising Application Whitelisting to Managed Service Providers and smaller businesses, building on their existing enterprise-grade product;
• Kortek, Telstra, and Intellidesign working together to deliver a highly secure Internet of Things platform;
• Responsight and McGrathNicol developing a system for forensic data collection, investigations, and early warning risk analytics based on behavioural activity profiling; and
• WorldStack, Penten, and TSS Cyber working together to accelerate joint development of a prototype to address the challenge of data breach detection and bring the solution to market through a customer trial.