Discuss about the Security And Privacy In the Department Of Finance.
The department of Finance of the Australian Commonwealth Government is one of the most important departments of the government (Finance.gov.au. 2018). It has the charge as well as the responsibility of the government assistance in the broader range of the policy areas for ensuring that all the outcomes are successfully met. The significant areas are the financial management, expenditure, total capital and the various operations of the government (Finance.gov.au. 2018). Currently, the head of the department is Rosemary Huxtable, who is again the Secretary of the finance department. Since, the department deals with all types of financial data or files, it is extremely important to be safe and secured. However, there always remains a high chance of data breach or data exploitation in this type of department (Brigham and Ehrhard 2013). All the data or the information related to financial services within the department of Australian Commonwealth Government are maintained by means of computer systems. Thus, the cyber risks or cyber threats are the most vulnerable risks of all those data. The data that is managed or controlled by the organizations of the financial services, unwillingly invites threat landscape with them (Damodaran 2016). The most significant risks, threats and vulnerabilities within the financial department of Australian government are given below:
Third Party Cyber Security Risk: This is the first and the foremost risk or threat that can be faced by the financial department of the Australian Commonwealth Government. This type of risk can be faced by the department if they do not select and monitor their vendor properly (Collins 2016). It is extremely vulnerable for the financial confidential data or information. There remains a high chance that the vendor will not be trustworthy enough to share all the important and confidential data.
Unencrypted Data: The third most dangerous type of risk or threat is the unencrypted data (Duffield 2014). Encryption is the most basic type of data security to any type of confidential or sensitive data. It helps to reduce or mitigate the data breaching to an extremely high level. The Department of Finance of the Australian Commonwealth Government should utilize encryption procedure for reducing the chance of data loss or data breaching (Damodaran 2016). This would be securing the names, addresses, account numbers or any other confidential information.
Mobile Banking Risks: The fourth most vulnerable risk or threat in the financial department of Australian government is the risk in mobile banking (Brigham and Ehrhardt 2013). This type of banking is the most utilized banking service in Australia. It saves time and is extremely efficient. The banking services comprises of all types of confidential data like usernames, passwords and account details. If these data would be lost, the customers or the clients and the banks would be in great trouble (Rudner 2013). This would eventually affect the entire financial sector of the government.
Malware Attacks: This is again one of the most basic threats or risks in the financial department of the Australian Commonwealth Government (Titman, Keown and Martin 2017). These types of attacks are introduced by the attackers or the hackers for the purpose of hacking the confidential information or data. This type of attack is done by injecting any virus or malware within the system. The Australian government can face these types of threats very often.
Spoofing Attacks: The next vulnerable threat within the finance department is the type of spoofing attack. The hackers or the intruders hack the websites of the bank and thus steal or manipulate the login details of the consumers (Lawson 2013). Once they get hold of the login information of the clients, the hackers get into the system for the purpose of stealing money or any important information. The data is always at stake in the financial department of the Australian government.
Big data analytics is the significant procedure for examining varied and huge sets of data, known as the big data (Matturdi et al. 2014). This data is examined for uncovering the various hidden patterns, preferences of customer, trends of market and other unknown correlations. The Australian Commonwealth Government can face several threats, risks or vulnerabilities in the Department of Finance. All of these risks are mentioned in the above paragraphs. Big data analytics can be a major help in this type of scenario. Big data helps to reduce or mitigate the various security and privacy risks effectively and without any type of complexities (Rudner 2013). The most significant advantages of the big data analytics mainly include the integration of both unstructured and structured data and extracting value from several sources of data. Moreover, big data works with flexibility, security and scalability. The most suitable application of big data analytics for diminishing the various above mentioned security issues in the Department of Finance of the Australian Commonwealth Government is Hadoop (Matturdi et al. 2014). It is a completely free Java programming framework that supports the overall processing of huge sets of data in a diverse environment. The transfer of data is extremely fast and all types of security issues are detected in the early stages. Thus, it would be helpful for the financial department of the Australian Commonwealth Government in mitigating and preventing all the risks (Titman, Keown and Martin 2017). The advanced system of Hadoop is known as the Hadoop Distributed File System or HDFS that is utilized for any type of data storage with utmost security.
The department of finance of the Australian Commonwealth Government is the most significant department of the government. They have various responsibilities or functions in the sector (Ruozi and Ferrari 2013). The financial department have the capability to cover the risks for the purpose of absorbing all the defaults by the interest that is earned on the other loans (Brigham and Ehrhardt 2013). Moreover, the financial department acquire all types of information regarding the investing opportunities and relay this information to the individuals by simply diminishing the reducing costs.
Since this financial department has various functions or responsibilities, they can face several regulatory and governance issues in their department. These issues related to the regulatory and governance in the finance department of the Australian government is given below:
Complexities of Cross Border Regulatory Standards: This is again one of the most dangerous risks in the regulatory and governance of the finance department of the Australian Commonwealth Government (Sundararajan 2014). The most notable risk in this sector is the divergent policies. Each and every country has its own policies and regulatory standards. When the cross border people come across under one particular government, there is a high chance that these standards would clash and thus complexities would arise.
Alteration in the Scope of Consumer Financial Protection: The consumers are the first and the foremost important factors in any government or governing body. The Department of Finance is responsible for securing and protecting the finances of their consumers (Ruozi and Ferrari 2013). Thus, a constant change is required for the betterment of the protection policy of the finances. This alteration or change can create a major problem as the consumers may not be able to handle the changes and thus the protection plan can backfire them. The Australian government should be ready for this type of problems and should be able to face this type of situations.
These above mentioned issues can be extremely problematic for the finance department of the Australian Commonwealth government. Thus, these are required to be avoided on an urgent basis. These types of regulatory and governance issues can be easily mitigated and removed by up grading the compliance policies of the government. The business model of the government should be extremely effective and flexible in order to deal with all types of odd situations. The objectives or the strategies undertaken by the government should be absolutely balanced for bringing out the best results (Sundararajan 2014). This would reduce the regulatory censure. Big data would be helpful in dealing all types of bulk data. The risks like management of financial crime and compliance can be solely avoided by the application big data analytics.
Apart from the regulatory and governance risks, the finance department of the Australian government can also come across several ethical issues. These ethical issues completely depend on the people, who are associated with the government (Titman, Keown and Martin 2017). The highest priority should be given to the consumers. However, the government officers often can face several ethical issues. They are as follows:
Illegal Activities: Since, the department is of finance, any type of illegal activities is strictly forbidden and thus any person involved in these activities can be unethical in nature.
These types of ethical issues can be easily solved by proper legal actions. When a person is found guilty or unethical, strict actions should be taken against him so that nobody can else can indulge himself in any unethical acts (Slade and Prinsloo 2013). The finance department of the Australian government should check for these acts and thus they can easily mitigate them. Thus, the government would be safe and secured in their terms.
References
Brigham, E.F. and Ehrhardt, M.C., 2013. Financial management: Theory & practice. Cengage Learning.
Collins, A., 2016. Contemporary security studies. Oxford University Press.
Damodaran, A., 2016. Damodaran on valuation: security analysis for investment and corporate finance (Vol. 324). John Wiley & Sons.
Duffield, M., 2014. Global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security. Zed Books Ltd..
Finance.gov.au. 2018. Department of Finance |. [online] Available at: https://www.finance.gov.au/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2018].
Gitman, L.J., Juchau, R. and Flanagan, J., 2015. Principles of managerial finance. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Gitman, L.J., Juchau, R. and Flanagan, J., 2015. Principles of managerial finance. Pearson Higher Education AU.
Lawson, S., 2013. Beyond cyber-doom: Assessing the limits of hypothetical scenarios in the framing of cyber-threats. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 10(1), pp.86-103.
Matturdi, B., Xianwei, Z., Shuai, L.I. and Fuhong, L., 2014. Big Data security and privacy: A review. China Communications, 11(14), pp.135-145.
Rudner, M., 2013. Cyber-threats to critical national infrastructure: An intelligence challenge. International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, 26(3), pp.453-481.
Ruozi, R. and Ferrari, P., 2013. Liquidity risk management in banks: economic and regulatory issues. In Liquidity Risk Management in Banks (pp. 1-54). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Slade, S. and Prinsloo, P., 2013. Learning analytics: Ethical issues and dilemmas. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(10), pp.1510-1529.
Sundararajan, A., 2014. Peer-to-peer businesses and the sharing (collaborative) economy: Overview, economic effects and regulatory issues. Written testimony for the hearing titled The Power of Connection: Peer to Peer Businesses.
Titman, S., Keown, A.J. and Martin, J.D., 2017. Financial management: Principles and applications. Pearson.
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