Recently, many large Australian corporations, including Optus, Medibank, Telstra, Woolworths Supermarkets and Costa Group, have been subjected to cyber attacks by cybercriminals, having a severe impact on thousands of Australians.
These lucrative attacks aren’t just affecting large organisations, but also many businesses around the country. In fact, according to research from Imperva, from July 2021 to June 2022, there was an 81% increase in cyber security incidents in Australia.
But it’s not only the number of attacks that has increased, the severity of the attacks has more than tripled between August 2021 and May 2022.
Reinhart Hansen, director of technology at Imperva’s CTO office, says “cybercriminals are targeting the personal data of Australians for financial gain – to sell, to hold to ransom, or to commit financial fraud and scams.
“During the pandemic, many organisations inadvertently created more opportunities for these bad actors. Many rushed their online implementations and transformation projects, taking shortcuts that left them vulnerable to exploitation.
“Now we’re seeing a large uptick in common, off-the-shelf and automated type attacks that hackers are continuously recycling and using against Australian targets,” continues Reinhart Hansen.
At Cloud Voice & Data, we appreciate that anyone can be a victim of cyber breaches and attacks. Please take this as an opportunity to increase your cyber security; implement multi-factor authentication, update your passwords regularly, and deactivate unnecessary accounts.
If you have been the victim of a cyber breach or crime, call the Australian Cyber Security Hotline on 1300 292 371 or make a report through ReportCyber.