The Australian government must step in to regulate cyber security qualifications over fears junk degrees are leaving businesses vulnerable to attacks, a leading industry think tank says.
Some universities have created specialised cyber security degrees from scratch. Others have simply added a cyber security unit to an existing course and labelled it as a separate degree.
Australian Information Security Association Chair Damien Manuel said businesses were struggling to fill vacant cyber security positions because many graduates lacked knowledge or experience.
"To some degree, students could be wasting their time doing a tertiary course that doesn't lead into a job role," Mr Manuel told AAP.
"There really needs to be some standardisation or transparency to help improve the quality of those courses and the education outcomes."
Mr Manuel made the comments as more than 4000 industry leaders gathered for the 2022 Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and 2022 Australian of the year Dylan Alcott addressed the crowd on Tuesday, where the recent Optus hack was frequently referenced.
Mr Manuel said workforce shortages were pushing up the wages of good cyber security workers.
He said they were more likely to be hired by bigger institutions like banks rather than small and medium sized businesses, which may be in their supply chains.
"You have thousands of all these suppliers, who could then potentially not have perfect security in place because they can't afford to get somebody.
"That creates a weakness that then the larger banks may become vulnerable or a larger supplier, like an Optus or a Telstra," he said.
Mr Manuel said Australia is now at risk of Optus-style data breaches every few months.
"While last month it was Optus, Telstra, you know, next month, it could be a retailer of some sort," he said.
"I would say you're more likely to see it happen every couple of months as opposed to longer term."
The Albanese government is currently rethinking the 2020 cyber security strategy and seeking feedback from the industry about its direction.
