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The National Australia Bank’s general manager of group investigations, Chris Sheehan, reveals the cyber security challenges facing Australia’s big four banks in a candid ABC interview.
National Australia Bank’s Chris Sheehan has said: “Every bank is being attacked all the time,” calling the current state of the cyber security landscape as being akin to “asymmetrical warfare”.
Sheehan made the alarming comments during an interview on the ABC’s The World Today program earlier today, 1 July.
“The entire community is at risk,” Sheehan said.
“We’re engaged in asymmetrical warfare on a day-by-day basis.”
Speaking about the range of threats, Sheehan said it ranged from simple hackers on a single laptop to transnational operations.
“From, being colloquial, Larry the loser, in the basement at home that’s having a bit of a chop away at the laptop and trying to steal money from people or hack into a system, all the way to highly sophisticated, ruthless and resilient transnational organised crime groups, and they’re the ones that are driving 90 per cent of the scams that are hitting Australian victims,” Sheehan said.
Sheehan said that at the very top of the threat pyramid are threat actors backed by nation-states, and he again stated that banks were in a constant state of “asymmetrical warfare”.
Sheehan then noted the resources being put towards fighting scams and fraud.
“We have a call centre and an operations team focused on the frauds and scams issue that is close to 350 to 400 people – they’re on the phone and available to our customers 24/7, 365,” Sheehan told The World Today.
Sheehan then reminded customers to be aware of the “red flags” of a scam.
“If it looks or sounds too good to be true, or if someone’s applying pressure to you that you’re going to miss out on something or you’re going to suffer a penalty if you don’t make that payment, they are massive red flags,” Sheehan said.
“If the story you’re being given, either by a text message, email, whatever, contains either of those elements, don’t hit send on a payment; run a mile.”
Australians lost $2.7 billion to scams in 2023, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
If you believe you’ve become the victim of a scam, report it to your bank or cardholder immediately and notify www.scamwatch.gov.au.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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