Meet Major General Kathryn Toohey AM — the newest member of Defence SA Advisory Board

She’s one of the toughest fighters for Australia’s cybersecurity, but the newest Defence SA Advisory Board member says, at home, even she could be a target.

Major General Kathryn Toohey AM has spent her entire career protecting the nation in the critical areas of space, cyber and information warfare.

And yet she might be the weak link in her own household.

“When it comes to our home network, sometimes my children call me the cyber threat for the family,” she jokes.

“The fact that our lives are so digitised it means that we are very vulnerable to cyber attack, whether it’s inadvertent – a mother not doing the right thing with the family modem – or the nefarious competitor or adversary.”

It’s a good way to illustrate the sheer pervasiveness of the threat of cyber attack and how it could affect every Australian.

Major General Kathryn Toohey. Picture: Supplied

And it’s why Major General Toohey, as the latest appointee to the Defence SA Advisory Board, is pleased that cyber, along with space, are two of the three key priorities in the state’s defence sector strategy.

“Clearly South Australia is already the maritime capital of Australia and significant investment in national shipbuilding,” she says.

“But I think by focusing in on those two additional areas, being space and cyber, that is really future-proofing the investment.”

Major General Toohey, raised in Canberra and with strong family ties to Adelaide, has just retired from the Army after 36 years, starting as a signals officer, and has specialised in military modernisation and project management for the past 20 years.

She acknowledges the recruitment challenge ahead of the ADF – needing to grow from 60,000 to 80,000 people by 2040 – and her own career is perhaps the greatest advertisement the Force could have.

“I joined the Army straight out of school because I wanted a bit of adventure and I liked working as part of a team,” she says.

“I honestly expected to stay for my ‘return of service’ obligation, which I think was about five years. But what I found when I graduated, even though I’ve had 36 years in the Army, you change jobs every on average two to three years.

And I’ve had great variety in the types of roles that I’ve had. I’ve done staff roles, operational roles, training roles. I had the opportunity to deploy overseas on operations. I was posted to Europe for a couple of years. So my lived experience is that it has been extraordinarily interesting, challenging at times.

“And I don’t want this to sound corny, but what we do is important and I really bought into the Defence purpose of contributing, even in a small way, to the security of Australia. That is a pretty amazing thing to be involved in.

She was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours for her role in the development of military satellite communications and was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2017 for exceptional service to the ADF capability development and education.