One of Australia's most secretive intelligence agencies has commissioned a book about itself, but the author is promising it will be a "warts and all" account of its history.

Key points: The Australian Signals Directorate commissions an ANU academic to write its history

The Australian Signals Directorate commissions an ANU academic to write its history The ASD is responsible for "revealing their secrets and protecting ours"

The ASD is responsible for "revealing their secrets and protecting ours" Both the author and the director-general expect new stories about spy agency's efforts to be revealed

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) is responsible for signals intelligence, cyber warfare and information security — but author John Blaxland said it was hiding behind a dull, "vanilla" name.

"The very name of the organisation when it was originally set up as the defence signals bureau … it was a bit of a cover name, it wasn't really an accurate description of what it was about," Professor Blaxland said.

"This is about signals intelligence, it's about eavesdropping electronically via radio waves essentially in the old days but its function today is to reveal their secrets and protect ours.

"It doesn't really give much away so what'll be fun is to unpack that and to tease the various aspects of that cryptography of the technology of the law … the human stories that go with that."

Professor Blaxland, a Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the Australian National University, is no stranger to the immense task of documenting the decades-long history of a national spy agency.

He previously authored The Official History of ASIO and said his experience with that project gave him a good idea of the challenge before him, but also how critical it was that the final product be as transparent as possible.

The ASD is highly secretive, but will work with Professor Blaxland on the book. ( AAP: Lukas Coch )

"This has got to be a warts and all story, this is not about hagiographic writing it's not what I do and people who've read the ASIO history know that I don't pull my punches," Professor Blaxland said.

"I'm quite happy to generate a bit of push back from insiders who are uncomfortable with what I've got to say.

"But the key thing is that this has to be a dispassionate, balanced account so if there are warts to be revealed they've got to show because otherwise this is not going to be credible."

But how do you write a history of an organisation whose entire existence has been shrouded in secrecy?

"What I'm planning to do … is to write it at the highest classifications in draft and then go through that line by line with officials to consider aspects that need to be pixelated out of the story," Professor Blaxland said.

"The key thing is to not let the story be washed out, that's something I'm quite adamant about."

'Transparency very important,' spy boss says

Director-General of the ASD Mike Burgess said he was confident Professor Blaxland could tell the directorate's story effectively without compromising the secrets that needed to remain in the shadows.

"Our mission statement is 'reveal their secrets, protect our own', so it's kind of unusual that we'll be revealing our own secrets, but it's critically important that the Australian people understand what ASD does," he said.

"Transparency is very important, for Australian people [to] know what we do and that we always operate in the spirit and the letter of the law.

"But it's absolutely critical to keep the secrets that need to be kept, but going back 75 years there's a lot that we can go through and actually we can rightly release."

Mr Burgess also said he was excited about the project and seeing the directorate's legacy enshrined in Australian history.

"Our British counterparts have recently celebrated their 100-year anniversary, ASIO recently did their history and as we turned our mind to the 75th anniversary we thought actually it'd be appropriate that we tell our story," he said.

"It's important from our staff's point of view to tell their stories, our history is their history."

The ASD was founded during World War II and has gone through a series of structural changes over the decades including the more recent split from Defence to stand as an independent statutory body.

The book will be released in 2022 to coincide with the directorate's 75th anniversary.