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While 85 per cent of Australian organisations have suffered a ransomware attack over the last five years, the worrying research has also indicated that 72 per cent of respondents tried to keep it quiet.
Not only did the research uncover that some 85 per cent of Australian organisations suffer ransomware attacks, but 35 per cent further reported that they had indeed paid the ransom to the attackers even though they believed it could result in additional attacks.
The worrying research into Australia’s cyber industry was undertaken by StollzNow Research for the ExtraHop Cyber Confidence Index.
In terms of confidence of Australian IT decision-makers (ITDMs) toward their cyber security capabilities, only 43 per cent expressed a high degree of confidence in their cyber offering, with the research reporting that the same percentage had demonstrated low confidence in their own offering.
The report theorised that the poor confidence may underpin why IT decision makers choose not to notify people of the incidents.
“Security leaders in Asia-Pacific are facing a challenge. They’re in disagreement with executives around disclosure, they’re getting increased budgets, but it doesn’t feel like enough, and there is worry around legal obligations,” Jeff Costlow, CISO at ExtraHop, said.
“These leaders need to focus on their risk tolerance for their IP, data, and customer data and arm their teams with the tools and network intelligence that can help them defend their most critical assets. This survey reinforces the challenge organisations face in preventing attacks. Let’s arm defenders with the tools and forensics needed to prevent an intrusion from becoming a full-blown breach.”
Luckily for the market, only 31 per cent of respondents expect that their budgets will remain the same each year – with 66 per cent outlining that their budgets are expected to increase.
“High levels of fear around the security implications of legacy environments, and the very real threat of multiple breaches a year, is a reminder of just how quickly cyber security postures can become outdated and vulnerable,” Rohan Langdon, ANZ country manager at ExtraHop said.
“Defenders need tools that can track attacker activity across cloud, on-premises, and remote environments so they can identify and stop an attack before it can compromise the business.”
Liam Garman is the managing editor of professional services, real estate and security at Momentum Media. He began his career as a speech writer at New South Wales Parliament before working for world leading campaigns and research agencies in Sydney and Auckland. Throughout his career, Liam has managed and executed international media campaigns spanning politics, business, industrial relations and infrastructure. He’s since shifted his attention to writing on politics and business, and holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Sydney and a Masters from UNSW Canberra with a thesis on postmodernism and media ecology.