Security update

Over the past year, threats against critical infrastructure and adjacent sectors have seen a significant rise, largely driven by nation-state actors who are increasingly focusing on targeting such infrastructure. This rising risk was emphasised by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess in his Annual Threat Assessment in February 2025. Burgess pointed out that authoritarian regimes are becoming more inclined to disrupt or even destroy critical infrastructure with aims to impede decision-making processes, damage war-fighting capabilities, and incite social discord. Specifically, Burgess is concerned about nation states pre-positioning cyber access vectors in Australian critical infrastructure that they can exploit in the future.

A key trend across these attacks is their focus on identity-based exploitation. Threat actors increasingly rely on brute-force techniques, compromised credentials, and poorly managed accounts to gain unauthorised access. Additionally, they target unpatched public-facing infrastructure, such as VPNs, exposed RDP services, management consoles, and applications to gain initial access.

Protecting Mipela’s clients and their data is at the core of our security strategy. Mipela’s security team consistently tracks strategic and tactical trends in the security landscape.

In response to these evolving threats, Mipela has strengthened its security posture by implementing robust identity-based controls. This includes comprehensive device management and compliance enforcement policies, ensuring that only trusted, secure Mipela-managed devices can connect to Mipela’s environment and log into Mipela accounts. Doing so protects Mipela against modern identity-based threats, including adversary in the middle phishing and tactics employed by nation state actors. To mitigate exploitation of public-facing infrastructure, Mipela has enhanced its vulnerability management program, with continuous patching and proactive asset tracking to secure edge devices and applications. Our security team plays a key role in analysing threat intelligence, identifying risks, responding to threats, and ensuring compliance with best practices in securing critical infrastructure clients.

Mipela also operates 24/7 security monitoring, ensuring that any suspicious activity is swiftly identified and mitigated before it can escalate into a security incident. By proactively securing our systems and infrastructure around the clock, we not only defend against direct attacks on Mipela but also safeguard the sensitive data and operations of the critical infrastructure clients who rely on us.

Written by Justin Fielke