After almost three years of helping Australian small businesses boost their cyber security readiness, the Cyber Wardens program, managed by the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, will close down.
“Originally funded by the Australian Government (1 November 2023 – 31 July 2026), COSBOA will cease delivering the program at close of business Friday, 11 September 2026,” a small note reads at the bottom of the Cyber Wardens website.
The note also warns those enrolled in the program to “complete your training and download your certificates, or the resources that you value from our Resource Hub”.
Skye Cappuccio, COSBOA’s CEO, told Cyber Daily she knew the deadline was approaching and was grateful to be able to extend the program for those already enrolled.
“The Australian Government grant was established for a defined period from November 2023 to 31 July 2026, and Treasury confirmed at the May Budget that government involvement would end with the grant agreement,” Cappuccio said.
“COSBOA kept the platform open for a further six weeks to give people additional time to complete their training, and more than 450 people graduated in August after government funding ended.”
According to Cappuccio, however, just because the program’s over doesn’t mean the job’s been done.
“Small businesses remain among the most targeted and least resourced parts of the economy when it comes to cyber security, and the threat is growing faster than many businesses’ capacity to respond,” Cappuccio added.
“Cyber Wardens has left us with proven course content, an established delivery model and a community of more than 50,000 participants. COSBOA retains the Cyber Wardens brand and content and we are in active discussions with prospective partners about a potential next phase.”
In fact, another note on the Cyber Wardens website suggests the closure is not entirely the end of the road.
“As Cyber Wardens enters its next chapter, we’d love for you to stay connected,” the site says, above an option to register an email to learn about “future programs and initiatives like Cyber Wardens”.
Nonetheless, COSBOA and its CEO are rightly proud of what Cyber Wardens has achieved.
“Small business owners are incredibly time-poor and cyber security is competing with everything else involved in running a business. Cyber Wardens showed that if you make training short, practical, plain-English and relevant to their day-to-day operations, small businesses will engage,” Cappuccio said.
“The results speak to that. Across the life of the program, we recorded 36,878 graduates from 52,616 enrolments and reached 23,150 eligible small businesses against an original target of 15,000. More than 400 webinars were delivered, and a network of more than 200 industry and member partners helped us take the program into small business communities across Australia.”
As to what those future initiatives alluded to on the website may be, however, Cappuccio can’t say.
“There is nothing further to announce at this stage, but we’ve learned a great deal about how to make cyber security accessible to small businesses and those lessons will help shape what comes next.”
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