Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has inked a whole-of-government subscription deal with AusCERT for commonwealth agencies.
The subscription service, in which all Australian government agencies will collaborate with AusCERT on security concerns for government computers and information, follows on from a recent Memorandum of Understanding between the two to further protect national information assets.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, who signed the deal last Friday, said the subscription to AusCERT is an important part in protecting national IT systems.
"The ability of the government to serve the Australian people relies to a very large degree on computer technologies that are robust and effective," Ruddock said.
"Unfortunately there are many people - hackers, criminals and even terrorists - who see our computer systems as 'fair game'.
"In subscribing to the AusCERT service, the government is raising the level of security that protects Australian government computers and the information they hold."
Nick Tate, director of AusCERT, said the annual subscription covers the whole of government.
"They (the government) decided to have a subscription covering all of the government rather than having individual agencies sign up to make it a lot easier," Tate said.
"In essence it is an incident response arrangement, but I imagine more of the work will be providing information about future and current activities and trends as well as advice."
AusCERT is based at the University of Queensland.
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