In a statement, the ACSC said it was providing advice to DPS in this regard. iTWire contacted the DPS for comment, but is yet to hear back.

The Age quoted a DPS spokesperson as saying the government was working to investigate the cause of the disruption.

“DPS is working to resolve the issues and some services have been restored,” the spokesperson said.

“Some services on DPS issued smartphones and tablets have been experiencing disruptions over the weekend.”

The last time there was an attack on Parliament was in February 2019, when attackers gained access to the computer network.

Commenting on the incident, H. Daniel Elbaum, chairman and co-chief executive of digital identity provider VeroGuard Systems, said: "Governments around the world are the number one target of hackers and Australia is not immune to these attacks.

"The sensitivity of the data they hold, combined with the systems and processes their infrastructure support, means even the smallest intrusion can have a significant impact – causing major disruption to essential services and internal operations.

"Australia remains one of the world’s most hacked countries, and recent reports have shown that the Australian Government is not investing enough in cyber security. According to the latest OAIC report, the Australian Government is now one of the top five industry sectors to report data breaches.

"Email is an easy target as evidenced by the mass Microsoft Exchange server attacks that have been widely reported in Australia and elsewhere in the past month.

"Organisations are now working hard to apply critical updates and patches as they should each month - Microsoft averaged 110 security patches per month in 2020.

"However recognising that the average time to identify a breach has increased to 207 days, government and business must improve their perimeter defences by eliminating the risks of identity credential loss and account takeovers that are both the symptom and cause of these successful attacks.

"We believe the highest priority for the government has to be to build the infrastructure that properly protects users and machines digital identities. All other cyber-security measures are (and will continue to be) simply proving to be ineffective without this action."