Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo says Australia should fight cybercriminals as though they are swashbuckling pirates. 

Mr Pezzullo has used an address to a parliamentary inquiry into new cyber-crime laws to suggest Australia model itself on the British Navy in its fight against the pirates of the Caribbean in the 17th century.

“This is a problem with which we can deal, just as Britain overcame piracy, but we need the tools to do so including the requisite legal authorities,” he said. 

“[A] model that I would suggest … is the campaign that was mounted in the 17th, 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, to clear the world's oceans of pirates.

“Including the pirates of the Caribbean, who were defeated by Her Majesty's warships of the Royal Navy, in concert with bringing law to a lawless ocean.”

The committee is considering new laws to protect critical water, health, energy and transport assets.

Some are seeking to impose greater cybersecurity obligations on operators that are responsible for vital infrastructure, and would also allow the Home Affairs Minister to compel those operators to work with agencies like the Australian Signals Directorate.

But Mr Pezzullo said Australia could play offensively too. 

“We have to be prepared to conduct offensive operations in the havens of cybercriminals,” he said.

“Cyber is not immaterial, it is material, it is reliant on infrastructure, hardware, coding spaces for the coders and physical staging points.

“These havens can be mapped and targeted. Nations such as Australia have an asymmetric advantage.”

Australian Signals Directorate boss Rachel Noble told the committee that it needs expanded powers, as some major companies have refused to accept its help.

“Some of these criminals, they know what they're doing, they do this all day, every day,” she said.

“When you're experiencing that for the first time, you know, it can be confronting, you don't really have the experience to understand just what they're capable of, let alone state-based actors.”