{"id":227677,"date":"2026-03-25T22:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T02:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/25\/government-entities-in-queensland-unaware-of-cybersecurity-vulnerabilities-audit-office-report-finds\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T01:35:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:35:13","slug":"government-entities-in-queensland-unaware-of-cybersecurity-vulnerabilities-audit-office-report-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/25\/government-entities-in-queensland-unaware-of-cybersecurity-vulnerabilities-audit-office-report-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"Government entities in Queensland unaware of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, audit office report finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government entities in Queensland unaware of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, audit office report finds<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2026-03-26\/queensland-cybersecurity-audit-highights-gaps\/106497032<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-25 22:50:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.abc.net.au<\/a><\/p>\n

A cybersecurity audit has gained the “highest level of access” to two government entities in Queensland, highlighting serious gaps in the systems.<\/p>\n

The auditor-general tested the effectiveness of a state government, local government, and statutory body’s IT security controls.<\/p>\n

Its report noted the entities did not know “how vulnerable” they were to third-party cybersecurity threats.<\/p>\n

“In each of the entities, we were able to obtain passwords, access systems, and extract sensitive information outside the intended scope of a third-party user,” the report said.<\/p>\n

“For two of them, we were able to bypass controls and gain the highest level of access to their IT environments.”<\/p>\n

The report found increasing frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks could expose entities that had weak cybersecurity.<\/p>\n

“Entities that do not manage these risks effectively may experience a cyber attack through a third party, leading to a loss of privacy, financial cost, reputational damage, and other ramifications.”<\/p>\n

As a result of the lack of mitigation controls, the auditor-general noted the entities could not understand the extent of their supply chain risks.<\/p>\n

Contracts were also found to be a significant security gap.<\/p>\n

“Only two of 36 contracts we reviewed included requirements for third parties to report their cybersecurity incidents and vulnerabilities,” the report said.<\/p>\n

“This means that entities can have risks that they are unaware of and therefore cannot effectively manage.”<\/p>\n

Risks raised five years ago<\/h2>\n

The auditor-general also assessed how the Queensland government’s housing department, customer services and open data department managed cybersecurity risks in the public sector.<\/p>\n

Queensland councils scammed out of millions despite warnings<\/h3>\n

A year after Gold Coast Council was victim to a fraud attack, Noosa Council was also targeted by a sophisticated artificial intelligence scam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It found the latter was not actively assessing or monitoring third parties’ cyber capability.<\/p>\n

“CDSB [Customer Services, Open…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government entities in Queensland unaware of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, audit office report finds https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2026-03-26\/queensland-cybersecurity-audit-highights-gaps\/106497032 Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":227678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au\/cf7dfc012b7eb9f3d7a02ca02d599bc3?impolicy=wcms_watermark_news&cropH=1688&cropW=3000&xPos=0&yPos=0&width=862&height=485&imformat=generic","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20,57],"class_list":["post-227677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227679,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227677\/revisions\/227679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}