Financial organisations too complacent on cyber risk
While slightly more companies are investing in cyber insurance policies, many are not responding quickly enough to cyber threats and are complacent about testing cyber resilience, due to poor overall risk management, according to a report from MinterEllison.
MinterEllison launched its Perspectives on Cyber Risk Report 2017 today, which predicted that cyber crime would cost the world around $6 trillion per year by 2021. According to MinterEllison technology partner and cyber expert, Paul Kallenbach, cyber attacks and privacy breaches had been driven by the growth in sophistication of the cyber security threat.
“It is now a business, economic and national security priority, which requires that a culture of cyber resilience be woven into the fabric of public and private sector organisations,” he said.
“Business is not responding quickly enough.”
In the 12 months since the release of MinterEllison’s 2016 cyber report, Kallenbach said Australia had seen some of its most extreme cyber incidents to date, including the exposure of personal data of around 550,000 blood donors by the Red Cross, as well as data thefts from popular social media networks Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Yahoo.
“Cyber attacks can entirely shut down businesses, causing significant damage to corporate and government reputations, relationships and systems,” he said.
“They can adversely impact other businesses in the supply chain, compromise the privacy of millions of individuals, and threaten economic wellbeing and national security.”
In the 2017 report, the regulatory landscape around cyber security had also been touted as another potential catalyst for increased risk and had become considerably more onerous within Australia in recent years.
“All organisations need to develop a culture of cyber risk management and look beyond the expectation of IT departments taking responsibility for risk mitigation,” Kallenbach said.
“Cyber security has well and truly transcended the realm of the technical. In every industry….it’s clear that no-one is immune.”
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