My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence. How is the Albanese Labor government working with public and private sector organisations to strengthen their cyber resilience against malicious state actors and cyber criminals targeting Australian networks?

I thank the member for his question and acknowledge his great work on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Today the government has released the Australian Signals Directorate's Annual cyber threat report. It reveals that in the last financial year ASD responded to 1,500 cyber incidents, which is an annual increase of 20 per cent. By historic standards, that's a big jump. What's going on here is that malicious actors are using artificial intelligence to locate vulnerabilities in the IT systems of companies and organisations much more quickly. We are living in a more contested cyber environment.

But, in turn, ASD is engaging with companies and organisations around the country in a much bigger way, alerting them to threats, providing advice as to how to secure their IT systems and then doing just that. As a result, in this report there is some good news. For larger companies, which have good cyber defences in place and which are working with ASD, the average cost of a cyber event has come down by 27 per cent. The not-so-good news is that for medium-size companies the average cost has gone up by 45 per cent. So they are very much now the focus.

Today ASD has three really important messages. First, if you have an old IT system connected to the internet, that is a gateway for malicious actors; you need to replace it. Second, it's important to take the time to secure and harden your IT systems, even if that means that you go offline for a couple of days. And third, while AI represents part of the challenge here, AI is also very much part of the solution. You need to use AI to harden your systems. There are a lot of great AI products out there now and, through cyber.gov.au, ASD is providing a lot of advice about how to use those tools. In a more contested environment it is possible to meet this challenge and to win, and ASD is there to help. I am very fortunate to see firsthand the incredible work undertaken by the men and women who serve in the Australian Signals Directorate and who each and every day are providing for the cyber defence of our country.