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A new report on the “resilience factor” of Australian businesses has revealed that many are not ready for the inevitable regarding cyber security.
Australian companies are beginning to understand that facing a cyber attack is not a matter of if you get attacked, but rather when, with 75 per cent of Aussie businesses now expecting a cyber breach sometime in 2025.
However, despite 97 per cent of local IT leaders believing their current state of cyber security maturity is ready, ransomware attacks on Australian organisations continue to rise.
Similarly, only 32 per cent of Australian IT leaders feel their cyber security strategies are ready to face advanced threats enhanced by the malicious use of artificial intelligence.
The new data comes from a global survey of 1,700 IT decision-makers across 12 countries, conducted by Sapio on behalf of cyber security firm Zscaler.
“The possibility of a major failure scenario for organisations is not an ‘if’ but ‘when’, as the statistics in our report show,” Jay Chaudhry, CEO, chairman and founder of Zscaler, said in a statement.
“It proves the need for proactive resilience to combat and mitigate inevitable incidents before they become a significant issue for business continuity. Proactive resilience is essential to address incidents before they threaten business continuity. Cyber resilience is foundational to overall business resilience, and outdated firewalls and VPNs allow persistent attacks, making a zero-trust architecture crucial for defending against advanced threats.
“Leadership must collaborate with IT teams to develop a strong cyber resilience strategy based on zero trust, preparing for and mitigating the impact of sophisticated AI-driven attacks. We call this becoming ‘resilient by design’.”
Budget and staffing concerns
According to Zscaler’s research, one of the key challenges Australian businesses are facing is a lack of commitment to cyber security. Most IT leaders said they understood that boosting cyber resilience was important, but only 35 per cent said it was a top priority for their company.
Similarly, only 52 per cent feel that their cyber security investment is suitable given the current escalating threat landscape.
A lack of dedicated staff is also a pain point, with only 39 per cent of Australian respondents having a dedicated chief information security officer.
“With the evolving threat landscape and our report finding 48 per cent of Australian organisations experienced a significant failure scenario in the past six months, a robust and proactive resilience strategy is now more critical than ever,” Eric Swift, vice president and managing director, ANZ, at Zscaler, said.
“We’re regularly identifying Australia among the top targeted countries for ransomware, phishing, and encrypted attacks, and with the report showing 75 per cent of organisations are anticipating a breach, the ‘resilience factor’ is crucial.
“The Australian government’s recent direction to prevent installation and use of DeepSeek from all government devices, citing security concerns, underscores the importance placed on national resilience. This decisive action reflects a broader commitment to safeguarding against emerging threats and highlights the necessity for organisations to align their security frameworks with evolving regulations to enhance resilience in an increasingly complex threat landscape.”
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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