Australian Cyber Security Magazine, Issue 14, 2022

DO NOT PAY THE RANSOM: WHY BUSINESSES ARE WILLING TO PAY

With the national attention on significant data breaches in recent months, between January to June 2022, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) observed a 14 percent decrease in reported breaches compared to July to December 2021. This appears in contrast to the ACSC Annual Cyber Threat Report 2022 which reported the ACSC received over 76,000 cybercrime reports, an increase of nearly 13 percent from the previous financial year. This equates to one report every 7 minutes, up from 8 minutes last financial year.

In the first half of 2022, the OAIC was notified of 396 data breaches. Of these, 162 notifications (41 percent) were a result of a cyber security incident, of which the top sources were ransomware, phishing and compromised or stolen credentials.

Despite the overall fall in notifications, the data trended upwards in the later part of the period and draws attention to an increase in larger scale breaches and breaches affecting multiple entities. There were 24 data breaches reported to affect 5,000 or more Australians, four of which were reported to affect 100,000 or more Australians. All but one of these 24 breaches were caused by cyber security incidents.

CONTENTS

1. Cybersecurity professionals burning out
2. Four urgent actions to create a security culture & protect your organisation
3. Industry-first zero configuration data protection
4. Why industry consultation is vital in Cyber Security
5. AustCyber’s Australian cyber week’s national tour
6. What data is most prized by ransomware attackers?
7. Zero Trust: Past, present and a call to action for the future
8. Observing your software vulnerabilities
9. Protecting SMEs against cyber threat
10. Businesses willing to pay double the ransom in 2022
11. Australian Government eyes cyber security strategy overhaul
12. Australian Government to increase data breach penalties
13. Singapore Government Minister calls for multi stakeholder approach to cybersecurity
14. How Asian companies are fighting cybercrime with graph data technology
15. UK Cyber bosses call for client side scanning to help prevent child abuse
16. We’re still terrible at password management
17. The art of data protection in Formula 1