Bureau of Meteorology hunts new CISO

The Bureau of Meteorology is hunting for a new chief information security officer to lead its cyber security centre after its last chief was snapped-up by the Australian National University.

Former CISO and IT operations general manager Suthagar Seevaratnam left the national meteorological agency last September to become ANU’s new CISO.

He spent just over two years at BoM, having joined from the Department of Defence in August 2016 – well after “foreign adversaries” were said to have infiltrated the bureau’s systems.

His move to ANU follows in the footsteps of former BoM chief information officer Lesley Seebeck, who was also poached by the university last year after a brief stint at the Digital Transformation Agency.

Rob Deakin, a former cyber security advisor within both the Department of Home Affairs and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, has been since been acting in the BoM CISO role.

But BoM has now begun looking for a permanent CISO to join its data and digital group, with responsibility for securing the data, infrastructure and systems that underpin the bureau’s operations.

The incoming security chief will be expected to oversee the agency’s cyber security centre and lead an operational team charged with developing, implementing and monitoring cyber security plans, policies, procedures and systems.

The senior exec will also be responsible working with the digital group to drive an uplift of security culture across the broader organisation.

BoM was given an undisclosed amount of funding in the 2017 federal budget to improve its IT security following the 2015 hack on its systems.

The funding is being used for a five-year IT refresh project, dubbed Robust, which aims to improve the security of the bureau’s systems, applications and processes.

An audit earlier this week put the total cost of the project at $60 million between 2017-18 and 2018-19, with another $20 million commitment.

Around $36 million was also spent on an initial program of work to response to the cyber vulnerabilities, which was funded in the 2016-17 budget.