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Cyber Defence and Cyber Resilience

Anticipate pitfalls and recover quickly

A cyberattack can be devastating. The actions you take during the first 48 hours of a cybersecurity incident response can be critical to a successful outcome. In Australia, regulatory bodies such as the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) and frameworks like the Essential Eight, SOCI and PSPF emphasise the importance of a timely and effective incident response.

These are complex cybersecurity incidents requiring specialised skills, tools, and knowledge. The most common scenarios you could face range from an uncertain response to handling security incidents and related outages to unseen threat actors bypassing traditional defences and detections.

Rigid cybersecurity incident response programs unable to counter dynamic threats and lack of business continuity and/or resiliency strategies, documentation, and response plans are also concerns.

Whether you need help in preparation and planning, retaining direct assistance or simply need to raise your response readiness profile, Protiviti Australia offers end-to-end cyber defence and cyber resilience services teams with expertise to match your technology, industry and situation.

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Blogs

July 25, 2025
18 min read

Navigating Australia's Cybersecurity Obligations: SOCI, PSPF and the Essential Eight – A Strategic Guide for Government and Critical Infrastructure Organisations

As Australia confronts an evolving and intensifying cyber threat landscape, public and private sector entities are under increasing pressure to fortify their cyber resilience. Central to this effort are three frameworks that define the country's cybersecurity foundation: the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act, the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF...
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Our cyber defence and cyber resilience services

Our cyber defence and cyber resilience solutions:

Strategy and planning

Develop a long-term cyber defence strategy to guide your organisation in the event of a cybersecurity incident. Our cybersecurity incident response plans are resilient, adaptable and compliant with the Australian and global regulatory frameworks such as the SOCI Act, PSPF, ISM, Essential Eight, ISO 27001, NIST and CSF.

 

Tabletop exercises

Whether you are rolling out an incident response process, stress-testing an existing process or a cyber defence strategy, or refreshing your team on the latest updates, we facilitate interactive sessions to test your cyber resilience response processes against documented plans with the relevant stakeholders.

 

Emergency breach response

No matter how much you invest in security, incidents happen. Our on-call cybersecurity incident response team in Australia helps minimise the impact on your business.

 

Ransomware advisory and recovery

Anticipate and map the threat landscape, react to a motivated and cunning adversary, and recover and adapt to maintain a resilient business model.

 

Compromise assessments

Clarify potential threats, examine your network for compromise indicators, and guide responses if malicious activity is detected.

 

Cyber threat intelligence

Access the dark and clear webs and conduct in-depth research and analysis to better understand threat actors and cybercrime and ransomware groups while also identifying potentially leaked credentials.

 

Post-event review and facilitated lessons learned

After an incident, recovery mode begins. Identify and address an incident’s root cause, evaluate response procedures for future incidents, strengthen your future readiness by aligning with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) guidelines, and reinstate protection confidence.

 
We help clients prepare to perform the most-needed tasks

Our cyber defence and cyber resilience approach

Our cyber defence approach is built on three pillars, including

Crisis management: Supporting leadership through cyber disruption with clear communication and governance.

Implementation without overload: Efficient preparation and response plans that are scalable and sustainable.

Enabling technical responders: Ensuring your most skilled technical staff stay focused on what they do best during incidents.

We help organisations in Australia prepare to perform the most-needed tasks during a cybersecurity incident for a faster response, minimal impact, and stronger long-term cyber and operational resilience.

We help clients prepare to perform the most-needed tasks
Believe in proactive responses to security events

Our emergency response on-call services

If you believe you have an ongoing or potential cybersecurity incident, contact our Australia-based on-call incident response team at [email protected].

Our cybersecurity incident response experts are always ready to help you plan and manage global incident response. We believe in proactive responses to security events. Protiviti experts are steeped in response execution, forensic analysis, and response plan development.

Featured insights and client stories

INSIGHTS PAPER

Mythos Emphasises Why Continuous Hardening Is Critical

9 min read
Anthropic’s Mythos is changing the constraints cybersecurity defenders have come to rely on — and most organisations are not prepared for what comes next.

NEWSLETTER

Key Topics for the Board’s Agenda in 2026

2 min read
Set an effective board agenda for 2026, focusing on AI oversight, risk management, and strategic execution to enhance governance amid evolving challenges.

SURVEY

2026 CISO outlook: Top risks, AI challenges, and growth opportunities in cybersecurity

5 min read
Download Protiviti’s Top Risks Report 2026 to explore how information security teams are addressing challenges in AI adoption, cybersecurity, data management, and digital transformation.

CLIENT STORY

Enhancing Cyber Resilience Strategies in Global Manufacturing with the FAIR Methodology

7 min read
Protiviti helps a global manufacturer enhance cyber resilience strategies with a Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) quantification programme.
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Client Story

September 24, 2024
7 min read

Enhancing Cyber Resilience Strategies in Global Manufacturing with the FAIR Methodology

Protiviti helps a global manufacturer enhance cyber resilience strategies with a Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) quantification programme.
Read more

Leadership

Hirun Tantirigama
Hirun is a managing director and Protiviti Australia's technology consulting lead with 18 years’ experience in providing risk and regulatory advisory services across a variety of clients and industries. He has led complex, transformational programs across areas such as ...
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Krishnan Venkatraman
Krishnan is a director with over 14 years’ experience in professional services. He has specific expertise in technology risk consulting and has been advising clients both in the public and private sector in designing and implementing information security controls.Major ...
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Chandrakant Kamble
Chandrakant is an Associate Director in Protiviti Australia’s technology consulting practice with almost 20 years of experience focusing on cybersecurity and privacy.  Chandrakant has significant knowledge in undertaking NIST CSF, NSW Cyber Security Policy, ASD’s ...
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Crisis averted

A medical device manufacturing company proactively partnered with Protiviti to pinpoint a hole in their technology, avoiding a publicity nightmare.

Case studies

 

Situation: A financial market infrastructure firm was required to enhance its cyber resilience and undertake a self-assessment to identify and prioritise areas for improvement.

Value: Protiviti supported the execution of a compliance assessment of the client’s cyber resilience framework, assisted and educated information security and management staff, and recommended ways to improve governance processes and a refined approach to the self-assessment with key stakeholders.

 

Situation: A large private university with more than 1,000 faculty and 13,000 students sought a third-party partner to develop and execute a tabletop exercise to test the school’s responsive capabilities under various stress scenarios.

Value: Protiviti’s detailed exercise package gave the university greater insight into its system availability threats and sensitive data risks while increasing its capabilities to detect, respond to and mitigate incidents.

 

Situation: ​A real estate management and global financial investment firm felt vulnerable to internal fraud and computer security. Its corporate internal audit function needed better controls in these areas across all its subsidiary companies.

Value: Gained efficiencies by converging fraud and computer security incident response into an overarching framework. Partnered with senior executives to ensure buy-in and acceptance of the business change.

 

Situation: The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) sought a partner to conduct its fifth Quantum Dawn cyber defence and response tabletop exercise.

Value: Protiviti helped raise awareness within the global financial services industry of current information-sharing infrastructure limitations; also determined areas of improvement in sector cyber defence and response efforts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is cyber resilience, and why is it important for businesses?

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Cyber resilience is the ability to prepare for, respond to and recover from cyberattacks in a way that minimises operational disruption. The first 48 hours of an incident are critical, requiring skilled response, the right tools, and well-practiced plans. Strong cyber defence and resilience helps organisations protect critical data, maintain continuity, and respond confidently to evolving threats.

How can Australian organisations strengthen their cyber resilience strategies?

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Organisations in Australia can strengthen resilience by building crisis management plans, ensuring effective preparation and recovery processes, and empowering technical responders with the right skills. Tabletop exercises, documented incident response plans, and proactive reviews help teams practice the actions needed during real cybersecurity incidents. Regular updates and continuous improvement ensure response programs stay aligned with emerging threats.

What are the key components of an effective cyber resilience plan?

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An effective cyber resilience plan includes strong crisis management, clear implementation processes, and the ability to engage skilled technical responders. It should outline roles, responsibilities, and actions to take during a security event to support faster containment and recovery. A focus on operational resilience ensures that long-term protection, readiness, and stability are built into every step.

What cyber resilience services does Protiviti Australia provides?

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Protiviti Australia offers a full suite of services, including strategy and planning, tabletop exercises, emergency breach response, ransomware advisory, compromise assessments, threat intelligence and post-event reviews. Our approach helps organisations test and strengthen their cyber incident response capabilities. These services support both rapid incident management and long-term cyber and operational resilience.

When should an organisation contact Protiviti’s emergency response on-call team?

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Organisations should reach out to Protiviti’s 24/7 cyber incident response team in Australia as soon as they suspect a data breach or cyber-attack.

Our team provides rapid containment, forensic investigation, and incident response execution to minimise business impact.

How does cyber threat intelligence improve cyber defence and incident response?

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Cyber threat intelligence strengthens cyber defence by identifying emerging threat actors, attack methods, and vulnerabilities. Integrating this intelligence into incident response processes enables faster detection, informed decision making, and a more proactive response to cybersecurity incidents.

Why is cyber resilience becoming a board-level priority for organisations in Australia and globally?

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Cyber resilience is increasingly a board-level priority as organisations respond to heightened cyber risk governance expectations, APRA and ASIC regulatory obligations, and enterprise risk management requirements.

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