By implementing a national multi-factor authentication system Australian citizens will benefit from having the highest levels of online security in the world. This technology may provide a significant competitive advantage to business in securing digital assets and could lead to innovation based export opportunities. The headlines report massive breaches of information that directly expose our financial systems to grave risk. Australia must set the benchmark in secure digital vigilance to safeguard our information security perimeter from existing and potential threats.

Greater adoption and usage of Open standards will lower the costs of MFA. There are a number of open standards in the security market. Reducing the costs to business by using open standards in deploying MFA is a practical forward looking strategy. Provisioning MFA has traditionally been costly. With a limited choice of vendors, the drivers for change have moved very slowly. Because of the high implementation and ownership costs, widespread adoption of the technology has been inhibited.

The Prime Minister’s Department invited submissions to “Cyber Security White Paper” late in 2011. This is Brass Razoo’s submission that prosecuted the case for Australia to adopt a federated multi-factor authentication that could be deployed nationally. By extending existing identification systems administered by Government and Financial Service providers, the nation could build an identification and security system that would be the envy of the world.