Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden has hinted the younger generation of security agency staff are not to be trusted in the wake of thousands of US intelligence documents being released to Wikileaks.

In an interview with the BBC he said:

"I don't mean to judge them at all, but this group of millennials and related groups simply have different understandings of the words loyalty and secrecy and transparency than certainly my generation did".

Does he have a point?

Australian Centre for Cyber Security Professor Greg Austin said he does.

"When Edward Snowden went public with his leaks in 2013 in our organisation in New York, we did a bit of survey and we found that all the young people thought [Snowden] had done the right thing and all the people of my generation thought he'd done the wrong thing," Professor Austin said.

"We just really stopped on that question because it was quite confronting. You can sort of imagine the more mature people were ... fuming about the Snowden leaks and the others were saying 'he's got a point'.

"Michael Hayden is one of the most serious and well-informed people in the United States to be talking about this subject so I credit his point of view."

New research shows Millennials have different views on cyber security

Director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security Jill Slay said a new report from Frost and Sullivan set to be released next week found millennials working in cyber security needed more job satisfaction, better opportunities and pay, and wanted to be heard.

"Organisations need to adjust to take on these perspectives," Professor Slay said.

"My generation feel bound by [the] Official Secrets Act ... this generation values individuality."

"Speak not because it is safe, but because it is right." ( Twitter: Edward Snowden )

Is it happening in Australia?

Professor Austin said there were instances of cyber crime right here in Australia.

"There have been eight [people] convicted for cyber-related offences at the federal level in the last eight years and three of the eight were Australian public servants," he said.

"And [from] what I recall, all younger than 40."

Is it the 'Edward Snowden effect'?

"I think Snowden has a huge effect," Professor Austin said.

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch (left) played Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate. ( Supplied: Dreamworks Studios )

"The recent movie shows him in a very positive light."

That's a reference to the film Snowden, which depicts the former NSA contractor's leak of thousands of classified documents in 2013.

The film is directed by Oliver Stone and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Snowden.

Julian Assange's story has also been told on screen.

Benedict Cumberbatch played him in the 2013 film The Fifth Estate and Australian actor Alex Williams portrayed him in the 2012 biographical drama Underground: The Julian Assange Story.



Do Millennials have a different attitude to information?

In short, yes.

"Well the information age brings with it completely new attitudes to secrecy and privacy, and that's the reality we face, and people who've grown up with open access and transparency of the sort that's available through the internet and mobile devices really simply just have a different emotional relationship with information and privacy," Professor Austin said.

"And in designing secrecy arrangements within Government we have to take that into account.

"We need to bear in mind 50 to 100 years ago young people also had a more cavalier attitude to information.

"And the best example of that are the Cambridge spies ... but governments definitely do have to take this into account but also corporations and private citizens.

"The old conceptions of privacy have gone out the door."

Is this because young people are more likely to be liberal?

Professor Austin said Snowden's agenda to uncover lies told in Congress by senior US officials was not inherently liberal.

"So the what I mean by that is that people haven't become in general more liberal … they've become more conservative," he said.

"Snowden wasn't out there on the barricades for a more liberal approach to United States society, he was out there to defend well-established principles of the United States political system.

"So we can paint that as a liberal agenda, but it's not really.

"I think we do have to take account of the fact that as of today the information age favours the more conservative political movement and not the more liberal political movements."

What's the impact?

Pretty big.

No longer are leaks a handful of pieces of paper.

"The scale and scope of the information that can be released in one leak can threaten the political legitimacy of the highest levels of government," Professor Austin said.

So, should average citizens be worried?

Probably not.

"The good news is the average citizen doesn't fall victim to it," he said.

"But people in public life, celebrities and public officials … have a new reality to deal with that's very different and very demanding."

And for millennials, it means government agencies and businesses might hold some scepticism with giving sensitive information to younger staff.

Professor Slay warned some millennials didn't understand the long-term ramifications of leaking sensitive information.

"You'll never be allowed in the circle of trust if you're ever seen to breach those," she said.