2021 Australian Cybersecurity Risk Report

The 2021 Australian Cybersecurity Risk Report is our inaugural report into the cybersecurity landscape across small to large businesses in Australia.

This report focuses on the approaches businesses are taking towards securing their systems and data and reveals the concerns individuals have around the business impacts of a potential cyber-attack within their organisation.

This report was compiled from over 515 responses from individuals in C-Level and Senior Management roles that have a key or final decisionmaking role in businesses covering a number of industries, including IT & telecoms, financial services, government, manufacturing, professional services, education and healthcare.

This results are nationally representative and weighted to the 2016 ABS Census to ensure accurate representation.

The report aims to help businesses better understand their cybersecurity landscape and provide valuable insights into what businesses can do to minimise the risks and repercussions of a potential cyber-attack.

STATE OF THE INDUSTRY

Data breaches and cyber-attacks have been rising steadily in Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ransomware attacks in particular have proliferated across the world and are growing in sophistication and maliciousness.

Under Australia’s Notifiable Data Breach scheme, more than 1,000 data breaches were reported between January and December 2020. Data breaches are becoming more costly and time-consuming to recover from. IBM reported the average cost per data breach in 2020 was AUD $3.35 million, an increase of 9.8% from the previous year, and took an average of 211 days for businesses without security automation to recover from.

Notably, data breaches resulting from human error have increased significantly, accounting for 38% of all notifications and rising by 18% from June 2020.

Despite the rising proportion of breaches attributed to human error, malicious or criminal activity is still the most common cause of data breaches in Australia, accounting for 58% of incidents in the second half of 2020.