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O’Neil: government response on cybercrime will not take away responsibilities of corporations to secure data

Clare O’Neil is asked whether the government is considering implementing a “safe harbour rule” like other countries have that would enable businesses to report what’s happened but then be saved from prosecution.

What’s really important to understand … is the way in which a cyber attack unfolds is quite different than other types of crime. So if you get something stolen from your house, the police can come in and you can identify the items that are gone usually pretty much immediately. Cybercrime is not like that. Often what is taken is invisible and it will take sometimes months to understand exactly what has happened.

So what what we are thinking about at the moment is how to make sure we’ve got as open disclosure as possible at the crisis point of the attack. So when we know there is an intruder on the system … we need to help companies [eject] them from the system as quickly as possible. That doesn’t take away from any responsibilities that corporations will have ultimately around the transparency of what has happened, and reporting that to government and to regulators.

We’ve got really good reason to believe that the cybersecurity environment is actually going to worsen. And I say that not to scare people, but to help them understand that we can see what is coming at us and that is why the government is so fiercely active on this issue.

What I mean by that is that cybercrime is a relatively new form of criminal activity. And I think what we’re seeing is countries around the world start to build and develop responses that will actually help us bring perpetrators to account …