Australia to introduce biometric passkeys for myGov login

If the Australian government was an NBA team, it might be the Memphis Grizzlies: looking ahead to a big 2024, but presently accruing losses at an alarming rate. Scrambling to plug holes in its myGov system that have leaked billions of dollars in fraud, the federal government has announced that as of 2024, Australians will be able to use face and fingerprint biometrics to sign in to government services, according to a report from The Guardian.

“Passkeys will be introduced to bring myGov further into the 21st century, allowing Australians the ability to use biometric options such as facial recognition to access the site,” says a statement from government services minister, Bill Shorten. “These important sign-in alternatives are familiar to many Australians, and are a key safeguard against scammers who use phishing tactics to harvest personal information like people’s date of birth to fraudulently access accounts.”

A major source of scams targeting myGov has been turnkey fraud kits sold on the dark web. So-called “scams-in-a-box” can be used to (for example) send a text message alert with an accompanying link to a fake myGov portal, where users are asked to confirm their bank accounts or take other actions that will compromise personal information. Common phishing targets include the Centrelink master services hub, the Australian Tax Office and Medicare accounts, all of which are administered through myGov.

Overseeing myGov becomes a team game with new advisory group

Also to try and avoid losing more than the AU$3.1 billion it has already seen disappear in 2023, the government is forming a special advisory committee to oversee myGov, a move recommended in results from a recent audit, which called on the government to treat the platform as key infrastructure and lock in its funding. Former NSW minister for customer service and digital government Victor Dominello will lead the eight-person expert group, which includes academics, policy officials and private sector representatives.

“This advisory board, I think, is a really elegant solution to making sure that in the future, when governments have ideas, they really work,” says Shorten.

Scams and data breaches are on the rise in Australia. In September 2022, major Australian telco Optus suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of more than a million customers – roughly a year before the Optus outage that caused chaos this past week.

Article Topics

Australia  |  biometrics  |  digital government  |  digital ID  |  fraud prevention  |  myGov (Australia)  |  myGovID  |  passkeys