Livestock identification biosecurity fears as NLIS data moves to Amazon

Livestock producers want to know why the National Livestock Identification database — which holds their private property ID codes along with stock transactions and movements — is being moved on to US tech-giant Amazon’s system.

NLIS data that underpins the nation’s biosecurity system is about to more on to US tech-giant Amazon’s system.

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THE private records of thousands of Australian farmers and their livestock are about to be transferred from the National Livestock Identification System’s on-site data centre to the US tech-giant Amazon Web Services’ cloud-based servers.

The move has alarmed some farmers, given US bank Capital One, which was hosted by Amazon Web Services, was hacked last year by a former Amazon employee who accessed the records of more than 100 million credit card applicants.

The NLIS database underpins Australia’s biosecurity and food safety systems, holding each farmer’s property identification code, stock transactions and movements.

The Meat and Livestock Australia-owned Integrity Systems Company, which manages the NLIS database, has sent letters to producers over the past week, stating the company had “in recent months been preparing for a significant shift of data infrastructure from our existing on-premise data centre, to Amazon Web Services”.

The data will be transferred to the Amazon system from 8pm tonight to 8am tomorrow which will result in the NLIS being offline.

Amazon has defended the integrity of its system, following last year’s breach, telling US lawmakers the attack occurred due to an error in the firewall installed by Capital One.

“AWS services and infrastructure were not compromised in any way,” a spokeswoman for the company said.

“It was a former Amazon employee. The perpetrator gained access through a misconfiguration of a third-party web application, and not as a result of the underlying cloud-based infrastructure.”

But Deniboota Landholders Association chairman Alastair Starritt said livestock producers had raised several concerns over the data migration to Amazon at a meeting on Tuesday night, namely:

THE lack of consultation with producers in making such a move;

PERSONAL details being held in a foreign account;

ISSUES with cyber security and fraud;

POTENTIAL hacking of details and livestock movements; and

RISK of losing sensitive market access.

But an MLA spokesman said ISC had published a detailed explanation on its website that assured the livestock industry the Amazon system was sound, given it was used by the Federal Government and had been certified by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.

ISC also stated the NLIS database would still be housed within the “Australian region” within Amazon’s system.

“All state departments of agriculture have reviewed, and agreed to, the migration of NLIS to AWS,” ISC stated.

“The move to AWS will not only improve our data safety, it will also ensure our systems perform more effectively, providing a better service to our customers.”

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