Published on the 11/02/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Individuals, business, even nation states are facing a rising tide of online security and safety threats prompting a rash of different responses…
The recent hack on Sony and its continuing fall-out demonstrate how vulnerable even the largest enterprises can be to online attacks.
In Australia professional services company Deloitte estimates that on average the cost of a data breach is AU$2.5 million and involves 20,000 records. Reputational damage can prove even more costly.
According to James Nunn-Price who has joined Deloitte in Australia to lead its cyber security team, “Cyber risks are a result of dynamic targeted threats. On an industrial scale they are focused at the digital assets, operations and information of the organisation. Both complex and severe, these risks are evolving faster than business can react.”
Deloitte has established a local Cyber Intelligence Centre to link with its global network of such centres which will work with Australian businesses to help them identify and mitigate cyber threats. Conventional wisdom has been that most organisations are at risk from insiders, but Nunn-Price said that 55 percent of breaches are perpetrated by hackers, 21 percent by state-affiliated hackers and 14 percent by insiders and a small percentage of attacks launched by activists and former employees.
It’s not just corporations that are vulnerable. Governments now recognise that cyber warfare is a real and present danger.
With just three months to go before Australia’s 2015 budget is handed down it will be interesting to see whether it borrows from the US Government which has asked Congress for US$14 billion to protect US Government agencies from hacking attacks.
The US has also established a Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) to collect and analyse evidence of cyber-attacks. In Australia a similar role is already performed by Auscert. It’s not entirely clear how the new CTIIC’s role will differ from that of the US’s own Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert).
The Australian Government meanwhile is also taking steps to protect society’s most vulnerable from cyber-attacks by this week debating the Enhancing Online Safety for Children Bill. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Communications, Paul Fletcher, claims that one in five Australians aged 8-17 has been bullied online.
He said that if passed the new Online Safety legislation would establish a Children’s e-Safety Commissioner as a single point of contact for online safety issues along with a complaints system for handling cyberbullying issues.
