Cyber security professionals have welcomed the appointment of Rachel Noble to head the Australian Cyber Security Centre as a suitable replacement for the outgoing Alastair MacGibbon, who announced plans a month ago to move to a private sector position.
Ms Noble, who is currently serving as a deputy secretary in the Department of Home Affairs, becomes the first woman to run the ACSC, and will retain the dual reporting lines as both a Deputy Secretary in the Home Affairs department and as a leadership executive within the Australian Signals Directorate.
The chair of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) Damien Manuel welcomed the appointment, saying there remained a lot of work to be done in industry–government collaboration on cyber threats.
“I’m looking forward to working closely with Rachel Noble and the team at ACSC to help protect businesses, mums, dads and the wider community from cyber threats,” Mr Manuel told InnovationAus.com.
“The current trend of Australians being scammed and attacked has rapidly increased over the last few years. It’s time we jointly turned that around through effective and efficient industry-government collaboration.”
AISA and the ACSC will jointly host the Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne later this year.
Ms Noble is the head of the Executive Group in Home Affairs, which is responsible for enterprise strategy, risk, assurance, security and ministerial, media and intelligence services.
She has held a series of leadership positions in Home Affairs, Defence (including ASD) well as the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
As PM&C’s National Security Chief Information Officer and Cyber Policy Coordinator, Ms Noble ran whole-of-government cyber policy and improved information sharing among the national security community, receiving a Public Service Medal for this work.
ASD director-general Mike Burgess said “Rachel Noble possesses a formidable skill set and the new role brings together her experience in cyber, science and security.”
“I’m particularly impressed by Rachel’s leadership qualities, which were so well displayed when she and I worked together previously to improve cyber policy across government.”
Prior to serving in Government, Ms Noble worked for Optus. She has a Masters of Business Administration in Technology Management as well as a Bachelor of Science with Honours.
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