Australia’s 2025 cyber response plan introduces a “nationally catastrophic” incident category, but preparedness for such a crisis remains unclear. This paper argues that cyber civil preparedness and resilience must become central to national security policy.

There should be a single overarching evaluation of the entire strategy (to ensure coherence between policy pillars) every four years as well as separate evaluations of each policy pillar, every two years.

Australia should harness the capability provided by civilians and develop volunteer cyber forces as part of a whole-of-society approach to national defence and cyber resilience. In addition to cybersecurity functions, volunteer cyber forces may be eYectively utilised in relation to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), information and cognitive conflict, as well as espionage and proactive cyber activities.