Research funded by the Australian Department of Defence has found the country may need a new type of weekend warrior for cyber conflict.
“One way to rapidly increase our defensive capabilities in the cyber domain is to learn from international experience in establishing a national cyber reserve force”, said Professor Dan Svantesson of Bond University and Fellow of the Nobel Institute in Oslo. “Sweden is involving volunteers in open-source intelligence. Finland has several effective cybersecurity volunteer units. Estonia has a long tradition of a cyber home guard.”
The analysis also looked at Taiwan, Ukraine and the US. The work has been supported by interviews in a number of the target countries. The work is funded by the Strategic Policy Grants Program of the Department of Defence.
“We see that volunteers can play an important back-up role during a crisis or wartime in civil and military cyber security, information conflict, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), espionage, and proactive cyber operations”, Svantesson said.
Associate Professor Samuli Haataja, co-researcher on the project and cyber law specialist at Griffith University says that “the challenge now is to ensure Australia establishes a cyber volunteer force so the skills of cyber experts are ready to be harnessed in times of crisis or conflict. Australia has a lot to learn from what other countries are doing. Australia cannot become a world leader in cybersecurity without an effective cyber volunteer force”.
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The researchers will present their findings and discuss future options at a webinar at 4pm Sydney time on 29 May 2025 hosted by the Social Cyber Institute, where Svantesson is a Senior Fellow.
