NSW Treasury, Department of Customer Service to merge cyber security teams

NSW Treasury will merge its cyber security team with that of the Department of Customer Service (DCS), in a bid to ensure the central agency benefits from upgrades being delivered by DCS.

The planned merger was revealed in a recent job advertisement for a customer facing chief information security officer (CISO) manager within the DCS Office of the CISO.

“We are embarking on a NSW government first and combining the security groups of two distinct NSW government clusters: DCS and Department of Treasury,” the job ad states.

DCS will take the lead in the new arrangement, with the manager to work within NSW Treasury and report directly to DCS’ CISO Matthew Fedele-Sirotich.

The manager, who will oversee operations, uplift projects and incident response, will also have a “dotted reporting line” to Treasury chief information officer Tracy Wilson.

DCS told iTnews “DCS and NSW Treasury are aligning the management of information and security between the two agencies”.

It is unclear why the merger is taking place beyond ensuring “NSW Treasury can best leverage enhancements in capability and capacity delivered by DCS”.

Treasury received $3.7 million from the digital restart fund this year to uplift its cyber security maturity, including by improving process to prevent, detect, respond to and resolve incidents.

DCS, meanwhile, received $4.9 million in 2020-21 to perform “major uplifts to cyber security maturity, cyber hygiene and incident control capability”.

The uplift extended to the GovConnect shared service program IT service provider and its customer agencies, which include Treasury.

The spokesperson also confirmed that the whole-of-government cyber security office, Cyber Security NSW, will remain at DCS.

Last year, a parliamentary inquiry recommended that Cyber Security NSW move from DCS to Treasury to give it greater clout, which the NSW government later rejected.

“Cyber Security NSW will remain at DCS and with a continued focus on enhancing whole-of-government cyber security capabilities and standards,” the spokesperson said.