The legal obligations you have if you own, operate, or have direct interests in critical infrastructure assets are outlined in the
Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018 (SOCI Act). The SOCI Act also outlines how the government can support you if an incident occurs that impacts your critical infrastructure asset.
In the financial services and markets sector, different regulatory obligations apply to owners and operators of different asset classes.
Responsible entities for all asset classes must comply with the obligation to notify data service providers. They must notify their third-party data storage or processing provider that the provider is storing or processing business critical data for a critical infrastructure asset.
Responsible entities and direct interest holders of financial market infrastructure must comply with the following positive security obligations:
- Provide operational and ownership information to the Register of Critical Infrastructure Assets.
- Report cyber incidents.
- Adopt, maintain and comply with a written critical infrastructure risk management program.
All other asset classes in this sector are only required to report cyber security incidents.
If you own or operate a System of National Significance, you may be subject to
Enhanced Cyber Security Obligations (ECSO).
The SOCI Act also includes
Government Assistance measures. These measures outline how the government can help industry respond to cyber security incidents. These measures apply only to incidents that will cause serious harm to Australia’s prosperity, national security, or defence.
The financial services and markets sector includes stakeholders in:
- banking
- superannuation
- insurance
- life insurance
- health insurance
- financial markets
- clearing and settlement facilities
- derivative trade repositories
- financial benchmarks
- payment systems
- financial services
- credit facilities.
Financial services and markets sector critical infrastructure assets
There are four types of financial services and markets critical assets:
- critical banking asset
- critical superannuation asset
- critical insurance asset
- critical financial market infrastructure asset.
