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New research from Thales has found that ransomware, malware and phishing continue to plague Australian organisations. Four in ten (38%) businesses been breached in the last year; 73% of ransomware attacks impacting internal and/or external operations.  First seen in the late 1980s, with the PC Cyborg Virus, the frequency and damage caused by ransomware attacks has accelerated due to the rise of cryptocurrency as the preferred payment method. The 2022 Thales Data Threat Report, conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, with more than 2,700 IT decision-makers worldwide, reveals a fifth (22%) of Australian organisations admit they have paid or would pay a ransom for their data.   Encouragingly, half of Australian respondents (51%) have a formal ransomware plan while 37% of businesses have increased their security budget in response to heightened concerns. Similarly, half of Australian organisations (48%) have been able to avoid a breach notification process because the stolen or leaked data was anonymised using encryption or tokenisation.    Data Visibility is a Challenge  As more companies adopt multicloud strategies and hybrid work remains the norm, IT leaders continue to be challenged by the sprawl of data across their organisations. As a result, less than a quarter (23%) of Australian IT leaders have complete knowledge of where their data is being stored, and only 23% state they are able to classify all their data.   Threats & Compliance Challenges  Throughout 2021, security incidents remained high, with almost four in ten (38%) businesses experiencing a breach in the past 12 months. Additionally, 40% of IT leaders admit to having failed a compliance audit.  Australian IT leaders rank ransomware (45%), malware (43%), and phishing/whaling (40%) as the leading source of increased security attacks. Managing these risks is an ongoing challenge, with half (50%) reporting an increase in the volume, severity […]

-Steven Hail, Adjunct Associate Professor, Torrens University Australia A decade ago, and years before Treasurer Josh Frydenberg promised a budget that was “back in the black”, Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised the same thing. At that time, in the lead-up to the 2012 budget, unemployment was higher than it is today, and inflation and wages growth were so low (1.6% and 2.3%, respectively) as to provide no impediment whatsoever to cutting unemployment further. Yet Gillard was resolute in her determination to bring in a budget surplus, by which she meant a budget that spent less than it took in. She titled her speech to Western Australia’s Chamber Of Commerce and Industry and Chamber Of Minerals And Energy “In the Black” There was “no clearer sign of a strong economy than a surplus”. It would “protect jobs”, provide a “buffer in case the global economy gets worse”, and allow the Reserve Bank to cut rates, “knowing that an interest rate reduction is good for families and business”. Indeed, she added: …let me make this clear once and for all: a budget surplus is not a political target but a potent economic tool. I sometimes wonder whether she remembers this claim. I nearly asked her once, crossing North Terrace in Adelaide, but I chickened out. As with Gillard, so with Abbott Gillard never did get her budget surplus, and she and Kevin Rudd were followed as prime minister by Tony Abbott, who talked of a “budget emergency” that only a run of surpluses could fix. While in opposition, his finance spokesman Barnaby Joyce had gone as far as to suggest that the debt run up by years of budget deficits (spending more than the government took in) was “getting to a point where we can’t repay it”. That was too much even […]