Department of Health hunts for cyber security provider

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is seeking to engage a cyber security partner to deliver services within a complex multi-vendor ICT environment.

The cyber partner will be responsible for the planning, implementation, operation, and continuous improvement of cyber services aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework v2.0.

As part of these services, the partner will be expected to provide SOC services, manage incident response and recovery, develop security monitoring use cases, implement a SOAR platform, manage SIEM tool operations, operate vulnerability management and utilise cyber security toolsets.

The Department’s current cyber security services are delivered under a whole-of-ICT outsourcing arrangement, primarily through a contract with Datacom Systems Australia.

This arrangement encompasses a broad spectrum of ICT services, including computing, storage, networks, End-User devices, IT Service Desk, Application support, and Service Management.

The Department has identified several limitations in its current cyber operations model that it seeks to address through this procurement.

These limitations include commercial licenses for security tooling being managed by Datacom, limiting the Department’s ability to directly assure tool effectiveness and enforce best-practice implementation, plus logging practices not being aligned to value-based outcomes or performance monitoring objectives, reducing visibility and operational efficiency.

They also include the scope of security operations monitoring not keeping pace with the introduction of new technologies, resulting in coverage gaps, and no effective assurance program in place to validate operational controls against the requirements of the Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM).

The tender closes on 13 October 2025 at 2:00 pm (ACT Local Time).