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Australia needs to do more to defend critical sectors such as energy, water, and data centres to keep up with the age of drone warfare, a new study says.
Australian utilities and critical infrastructure have yet to face anything approaching a domestic cyber incident enabled by drones; however, the country cannot afford to rest on its laurels, according to a new report from the University of Canberra.
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“We know how drones have changed traditional warfare, but are we oblivious of the role they play in cyber security?” Professor Frank den Hartog, Cisco research chair in critical infrastructure at the university, said in a 20 January statement.
“That’s a worry, and an opportunity for our drone and cyber industry.”
The report – Drone-Enabled Cybersecurity Threats to Australia’s Critical Infrastructure, written by researchers from the University of Canberra’s Innovation Central Canberra (ICC), in cooperation with Aussie defence tech company DroneShield – suggests that limited drone detection capabilities, a lack of government guidance, and the growing ubiquity of drones as a battlefield mainstay, combine into something of a perfect storm for critical infrastructure operators.
Drones, the report said, are no longer an “emerging” threat – they are a very real, very impactful part of the modern threat environment, and not just as kinetic enablers on the battlefields of Ukraine and elsewhere. Drone-enabled cyber attacks are already beginning to emerge overseas – at an experimental stage, perhaps – but the report’s authors believe the next five years will see this capability evolve.
“This research highlights the need for greater education, more industry collaboration, improved knowledge-sharing, and broader consideration of counter-drone capabilities across critical infrastructure sectors,” den Hartog said.
“We need to encourage operators to periodically and critically review how drones are used within their operations, assess the cyber security implications of increased adoption, and explore strategies to integrate drone risk into existing security and resilience programs.”
The ICC and DroneShield will continue to collaborate on this area of research.
You can read the full report here.
