Cyber strategy has cost Home Affairs $2.8 million so far

The government’s 2023-2030 Australian cyber security strategy has so far set the government back just over $2.8 million, with no strategy yet to show for it.

In an answer to a question put on notice by senator James Paterson to senate estimates in May, the Department of Home Affairs said that in addition to its staffing expenditure, the department has spent $2.8 million on strategy development to date.

The big winner in the process is McKinsey*, which has banked almost $2.4 million for “developing briefings and background content, stakeholder engagement and minutes for industry meetings, as well as project management for the strategy”.

CyberCX was paid $170,500 for “a report on analysing approaches to global threat 
sharing and threat blocking”, while providing specialist legal advice has been worth just over $63,000 to Clyde and Co.

The current government reset the cyber security strategy development process in August 2022, and in December 2022 issued a discussion paper designed to inform the new strategy.

The department has not yet published submissions to the discussion paper, although some have been individually published ahead of time.

In its answer to senator Paterson, Home Affairs added that it cannot provide any breakdown of the “expected cost of initiatives” under the strategy, because the strategy “remains to be considered by government”.

*Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly named KPMG as receiving funds for secretariat services. The author apologises for the error.