US, Australian healthcare agencies sign MoU to collaborate during cyber threats for Australian organizations

The U.S. Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Health-ISAC) and the Australian Critical Infrastructure – Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (CI-ISAC) announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) this week. The agreement aims to enhance coordination and collaboration in addressing cyber threats impacting Australian health organizations.

Denise Anderson, president and CEO of the Health-ISAC, and Helaine Leggat, non-executive director at the CI-ISAC Australia, signed the MoU in Melbourne, Australia. The agreement outlined the collaboration between these two organizations to develop cybersecurity capabilities for Australian health organizations, share relevant information and learning opportunities, and coordinate initiatives that align with both organizations’ missions.

“As we all know, cyber threats are not limited to international borders,” Anderson said in a media statement. “It is crucial for us to unite and stay vigilant against these risks. By bringing the global perspective of Health-ISAC and the Australian perspective from CI-ISAC together through this partnership, we can create a safer community.”

CI-ISAC is a not-for-profit entity ‘owned’ by its members and provides a value-for-money and commercially safe environment for companies to share insights to build a stronger, collective response to cyber-attacks. CI-ISAC co-exists with existing government CTI sharing programs and helps expand the reach of CTI sharing into small and large entities. It also provides an industry-for-industry solution to CTI sharing.

CI-ISAC Australia CEO David Sandell noted, “This partnership will deliver outcomes both locally and globally as we collaborate to uplift the collective defenses of our members against cyber threats.”

The CI-ISAC/Health-ISAC MOU includes arrangements for sharing information on cyber threats targeted at the health sector, which will be augmented by CI-ISAC’s visibility across the remaining CI sectors in Australia. Global CTI data from Health ISAC and its partner network will be made available to all CI-ISAC members in the form of actionable intelligence in the form of advisories and CI-ISAC’s automated threat feed.

This partnership exemplifies CI-ISAC’s cross-sectoral approach to ‘learning from one to benefit many’ and collectively uplifting Australian CI’s cyber defenses. In addition to deepening CI-ISAC’s visibility into threats to medical devices and the Health Sector as a whole, the partnership will offer further enrichment to CI-ISAC’s CTI existing data flows.

Health-ISAC will benefit from increased situational awareness of the types of threats and cyber-attack techniques impacting Australian entities, in addition to relevant technical analysis from the CI-ISAC National Intelligence Office. Data sharing will be built progressively, based on member guidance, and will comply with CI-ISAC’s strict data handling and intelligence sharing guidelines.

The data-sharing MOU represents another step in the growth and development of CI-ISAC Australia. With a ‘team of teams’ approach, CI-ISAC Australia is evolving to be an important part of Australia’s cyber defenses.  A member-led not-for-profit company, owners, and operators from across the 11 critical infrastructure sectors are encouraged to join.

Anna Ribeiro

Industrial Cyber News Editor. Anna Ribeiro is a freelance journalist with over 14 years of experience in the areas of security, data storage, virtualization and IoT.