Tax office on the hunt for new infosec chief

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has kicked off a hunt for a new IT security chief, who will advise chief technology officer Todd Heather on the agency's infosec strategy.

It is offering up to $251,000 a year for an experienced security professional it says will “provide technical leadership and direction for the development, design and implementation of the ATO’s enterprise IT security solutions, in line with the new ATO IT strategy”.

Working at the senior executive service band 1 level, the successful candidate will work within CIO Bill Gibson’s Enterprise Solutions and Technology division.

The job ad explained the agency that it is in the process of “transforming how we view and use technology to fulfil our role in effectively managing and shaping the tax and superannuation systems.”

“Building agility, intelligence and efficiency is at the heart of our IT strategy and will direct how we invest, design and deliver our services,” it added.

The ATO is the custodian of some of the most sensitive data on Australian citizens held by the Commonwealth Government.

To date it has avoided any large scale privacy breaches, although early last year unauthorised third parties were able to break into the ATO’s tax agent portal using the authentication details of four registered accountants.

This meant the intruders had access to the financial details of those agent’s clients.

Furthermore, ATO was also one of seven Canberra agencies advised to tighten up their security practices by the Australian National Audit Office in June.

The new assistant commissioner will pass advice to the CTO on curent best practice when it comes to information security.

“They will also need to provide innovative solutions to enable the ATO to provide digital solutions that meet our client’s expectations while ensuring the security and integrity of our data,” says the job ad.

Applications for the position close 24 September 2014.