Coalition Senator Jane Hume asked the Parliamentary Budget Office whether it complied with the list of cybersecurity measures that are a base-level requirement for government departments and agencies. The Essential Eight is a checklist of cybersecurity measures deemed essential by the Australian Signals Directorate for protecting systems from cybercrime. Eight measures highlighted by the ASD as critical are patching applications and operating systems, multi-factor authentication, restricting administrative privileges, application control, restricting Microsoft Office macros, user application hardening, and regular backups.