"The breadth and duration of telecommunications outages, affecting Australia’s critical infrastructure, should serve as a warning that Australia remains vulnerable to attack," says University of the Sunshine Coast cybersecurity academic Dr Dennis Desmond.

The former FBI Special Agent comments on today's news:

"Beginning about 3am this morning, Telstra and OPTUS experienced severe service outages affecting customers on a national level with outages occurring in most of the major cities.

"Simultaneously, train service in Melbourne was halted for a period of time. Additional service outages are being reported by subsidiary companies such as Vodafone, Amaysim, TPG, and DODO.

"Further, other non telecommunications providers such as ANZ are also reporting outages owing to their reliance on telecommunications services such as EFTPOS.

"The breadth and duration of these outages, affecting Australia’s critical infrastructure, should serve as a warning that Australia remains vulnerable to attack from both nation state adversaries and organised criminal groups.

"Over the last few years, dozens of companies, academic institutions and government agencies have experienced outages and data breaches.

"Meanwhile, billions of illicitly obtained dollars have been laundered by foreign threat actors including China, Russia and North Korea, often through difficult to trace cryptocurrencies, making seizure and recovery almost impossible.

"Australia’s continued and repeated victimisation by foreign actors resulting in the loss of valuable intellectual property, sensitive medial and identity data, and damages to businesses constitute a significant threat to national security.

"A shortage of qualified and trained cybersecurity professionals has exacerbated these threats.

"The need for Australia to improve and develop its cybersecurity defensive posture remains unquestioned.

"The government must do more to increase the number of cybersecurity professionals able to defend Australia’s critical infrastructure and secure it vital data and informational assets."