The Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre (A3C) at South Australia’s innovation precinct, Lot Fourteen, was officially opened on Monday 6 July by the Premier of South Australia Steven Marshall.

Premier Steven Marshall said the A3C is the first centre of its kind in Australia, bringing together education, industry and business sectors, established through a $10 million investment by the State Government.

“The Marshall Government has made a commitment to make South Australia the nation’s leader in cyber security – the A3C is the cornerstone of this vision,” Premier Marshall said.

“South Australia is now driving the growth of Australia’s cyber industry, creating high-tech jobs and generating significant interest from interstate and overseas.

“Cyber security and resilience are increasingly becoming front of mind for the business community and COVID-19 has created further awareness due to working off-site arrangements, which are likely to continue in unprecedented numbers.

“The A3C will support the development of a cyber workforce for global businesses that can establish cyber teams in South Australia to take advantage of our world class research, education, market reach and lower cost environment.”

“As the recent Australia wide cyber attacks show, threats to businesses, governments and essential systems are not theoretical – they are here, they are already happening, and we must ensure we have the right people, skills and infrastructure to head them off.

“Cyber is a business risk, in the same way we would consider product quality and workplace safety as an integral part of doing business. The A3C is set up as a place where businesses can come to get advice and build their skills and workforce capability.”
Minister for Innovation and Skills David Pisoni said the A3C will engage internationally to bridge capability gaps, bring world class cyber capabilities to Australia, and champion collaboration, innovation, entrepreneurship and enterprise.

“Cyber security is a high demand industry. Modelling by South Australia’s Training and Skills Commission shows between 5,000 and 7,500 new job openings for SA’s ICT workers over the next five years, with up to 1500 requiring training in cyber security,” Minister Pisoni said.

“Additionally, around 3,800 current ICT workers will need continued cyber security training to increase and maintain their skill base.
“Critical to this is upskilling and training people through the Cyber Training Academy, which will bring in world-class training capability from around Australia and around the globe.”

A3C CEO Hai Tran said the A3C is now operational as an independent not-for-profit entity housing the Cyber Training Academy and a Cyber Test Range, physical spaces for collaboration and cyber infrastructure to support product testing and training.

“The Cyber Test Range will be used to carry out security testing of equipment or network configurations in the knowledge that networks are safe from interference,” Mr Tran said.

“The Range will also provide capabilities for SMEs, researchers and government to collaborate. It will allow cyber security devices, software and techniques to be introduced into the environment for certification, or standards-based testing to be performed, to help get products to market.”
BAE Systems Australia CEO Gabby Costigan said cyber security for the defence industry supply chain is critically important on two fronts.

“The first is the cyber security of a SME’s business systems and the second is the cyber security of their products before being incorporated into our platforms.

“Our participation in the A3C aims to develop strong relationships with key industry, academia and researchers to help us find solutions to complex problems.

“We will support the ASC Shipbuilding Hunter Class Program with a focus on developing cyber capability within Indigenous owned businesses.

“A3C will also develop a strong talent pool of cyber professionals that we will need to draw upon in the future for our nationally important defence programs.”

The A3C has been established in collaboration with industry, academia, and federal and state governments, including BAE Systems Australia, Optus, Dtex Systems, UniSA, Flinders University, TAFE SA, South Australia’s Office for Cyber Security, AustCyber, the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, The University of Adelaide and the Defence Science and Technology Group.