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A massive portion of Australian businesses are falling victim to threat actors, with over one in five suffering from some form of cyber attack.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 22 per cent of businesses in Australia suffered from a cyber attack during the 2021–22 financial year, demonstrating that attacks had almost doubled since the 2019–22 financial year, when attacks were roughly one in 10 (8 per cent).
“Today’s Characteristics of Australian Business data release is important because it gives governments and researchers information about the prevalence, impacts and nature of cyber attacks,” said head of ABS business statistics Robert Ewing.
“This helps them understand who they need to support and what strategies they need to use.”
Dealing with cyber attacks is becoming an increased priority for businesses, which, having seen growth in technological advancements and the importance of data security more prevalent in news and media, have begun placing more focus on protecting themselves.
“In 2021–22, 34 per cent of businesses reported loss of time in managing cyber security attacks, 18 per cent reported downtime of service, while 17 per cent reported a loss of staff productivity,” added Ewing.
On top of this, an increased number of businesses have reported having the facilities to protect against a cyber attack, with 70 per cent reporting having some form of protection measure.
“Over 60 per cent of businesses reported regular updates to virus protection software. Around 37 per cent of businesses regularly backed up operations-critical data, while 20 per cent had identity access management, and 13 per cent gave staff cyber security awareness training,” Ewing said.
Evidently, the focus on cyber security is working. In the 2021–22 financial year, just over half of reported businesses that experienced a cyber attack were negatively impacted, while during the 2019–22 financial year, over 80 per cent of businesses were impacted negatively.
Following the 2021–22 financial year that the ABS statistics report on, Australia suffered some of the largest cyber attacks the nation had ever seen, with Optus, Medibank and Latitude.
A report released last month by Trend Micro Australia has revealed that fear has been set in the heart of business owners all over the country as a result of this, with over four in five Aussie businesses expecting to get hacked.
Despite cyber risk levels declining from “elevated” to “moderate”, according to the Trend Micro Australian cyber risk index (CRI), 84 per cent of Australian organisations believe that it was “somewhat to very likely” that they would suffer from a successful cyber attack.
In addition, 79 per cent of respondents said that it was just as likely that they would suffer a breach of customer data, while 80 per cent expected a breach of IP.
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