The initiative between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and the US — known as the Five Eyes — seeks to open up a wealth of security intelligence held by government agencies to help organisations better secure themselves. Former long-serving White House cyber security advisor to George W Bush and President Barack Obama, Howard Schmidt, had worked on the project with Australian counterparts including national security advisor Dr Margot McCarthy and National Security chief information officer Rachael Noble. “Governments find this information say through their signals intelligence and they say they have to classify it, and that is not necessarily the case,” Schmidt told SC.