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In today’s world, phrases like phishing, ransomware, viruses, and worms are common language – not just among IT professionals.
And in Australia, cyber attacks are increasing rapidly, resulting in a more public examination of the nation’s cybersecurity. Millions of Australians have been affected by data breaches from major companies such as Optus and Medibank.
“The employee factor is often overlooked,” says John Brown, an IT security expert from the Australian-based firm SyberSecure. “But it’s essential to protecting your company’s data.” According to Brown, there are several things that businesses can do to protect their data better, including implementing strong cybersecurity policies and training their employees to recognise phishing scams, ransomware attacks, and other common threats.”
The federal government is attempting to improve privacy rules and enforce stricter penalties, but some experts say this will do little to quell the hacking frenzy. The lack of available cybersecurity skills is a large part of the problem.
The harsh reality is that no one is safe from cybercrime, regardless of how much effort they put into prevention. Companies large and small are at risk, as well as individual users.
Although this may have been accurate in the past, data and PII protection have become a bigger problem for businesses as more transactions are now done online.
Identifying lateral movement and unauthorised access in the current business world is tough.
Most SOCs are so overwhelmed by security alerts that they need help quickly determining which are actual cyber attacks or breaches.
It is a problem that Chief ISOs are facing more and more, and it’s only getting worse. Research we conducted among Australian security leaders showed that more than 96% of employees in ANZ organisations feel increased pressure to keep their organisations safe.
“This stress leads to inaction,” says Brown. “And when you combine this with the fact that most employees lack proper cybersecurity training, it’s a recipe for disaster.”
Furthermore, anxiety levels are high in Australia and New Zealand due to 52% and 48% of the population frequently using fire-fighting.
The worldwide shift to working from home during the COVID pandemic also increased the use of cloud-based services. However, this broadened the potential for cyberattacks as criminals learned more about exploiting environments like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
While IT teams can deploy infrastructure and codes faster than in the past, this has also resulted in more security blind spots. These blindspots are putting a strain on already overworked IT security teams.
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