Cyber assaults have been the main story in Australia for the previous few weeks with the breaches at Medibank Private and Optus being two of essentially the most excessive profile circumstances.
It is reported in Business News America that three-quarters of companies within the UK and the US have been hit by a severe cyber assault a minimum of as soon as since 2019, in line with the S-RM Cyber Security Insights Report 2022.
With each the UK and the US seeing a big enhance in assaults throughout all incident varieties in 2022, it could seem that it isn’t solely Australia that’s being focused by cyber criminals.
The report states that “information exfiltration went up from 37% to 46%, ransomware from 30% to 40%, hacktivism from 32% to 39%, denial of service from 28% to 39%, fraud from 29% to 38% and cryptojacking from 27% to 33%“.
Sticking with the report, I agree with the part that states, “The true cost of a security breach lies in the indirect losses, which have become more costly than the cyber attack itself. Reputation damage and paid ransom averaged £1.5 million in 2022. Nearly half of these businesses also went into operational downtime, increased insurance premiums, experienced reputational damage, and paid legal costs following the cyber attack”.
Here in Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) fifth Digital Platform Services Inquiry Interim Report was launched final Friday (eleventh November 2022). It outlines the ACCC’s suggestions to Treasury for reforms to competitors and client legislation that it considers will deal with ‘significant consumer and competition harms’ it has recognized in its inquiries over the previous 5 years. These embody scams, dangerous apps and faux critiques, insufficient dispute decision, elevated market focus and cases of anti-competitive conduct.
The ACCC has discovered that the present competitors and client legal guidelines will not be ample to handle these harms, so has really helpful quite a lot of reforms.
Penalising companies is one factor, however in lots of circumstances that is like having your private home burglarised after which being fined for the housebreaking somewhat than punishing the burglar.
While it’s clearly incumbent on all of us to have strong safeguards, processes and common coaching of workers in place, on the identical time, if main authorities establishments in developed international locations have had cyber breaches after investing in lots of tens of millions of {dollars} in cyber safety there’s solely a lot that Australian small and medium companies can do.
For a while I’ve questioned why the Australian authorities has not put an finish to robocalls and texts. I’d strongly suspect that there must be a telecommunications firm that’s making vital income by permitting voice and textual content over IP providers to those that are making the robocalls and transmitting the textual content messages typically with false cellular or land line numbers.
I’m suggested that robocalls have been shut down within the European Union. Please let me know within the feedback part in the event you imagine in any other case.
In the United States the federal government, by means of the FCC, has determined to not goal the abroad robocall firms themselves – somewhat, they’re going after the trunking suppliers who’re permitting robocalls to terminate into the US public switched phone community.
The common YouTube channel Cross Talk Solutions not too long ago posted a video explaining what the US is doing to fight the issue. You can watch it right here.
I strongly urge the Australian Government to take the same method however embody vital fines and jail time to the Australian Directors and Senior Management of any Australian firm that’s aiding and abetting the felony behaviour.
There are quite a lot of companies that may present recommendation and testing on cyber safety, together with LMI, and naturally I proceed to strongly suggest sound threat administration and cyber insurance coverage protection.