How you can protect against cyber risk
Australian businesses and individuals face a growing threat from data breaches, and email and SMS text messaging scams. With 20 times* more data breaches than the global average, both businesses and individuals in Australia need to be extra vigilant to protect themselves from cyber fraud.
Close to home
Cybercrime is continuously evolving. It attracts those with intellectual minds – both lawful and criminal – because of its complexity, its constant evolution and its seat on the cutting edge of digital innovation.
All individuals, as well as companies, large and small, have a social responsibility to better secure the data they collect and store about, and on behalf of, their customers. You should know your data, know the value of your data, know where it is, know how to protect it and know how to respond if it’s compromised.
In the case of companies, apart from affecting their ability to operate, a major motivation for improving cyber security that’s often forgotten is the impact of a cyber breach on their customers and importantly, their reputation.
Our strata ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to attack from cybercriminals due to the number of payment transactions passing through IT platforms.
What can we do right now?
All individuals and companies should have a comprehensive technology and data protection strategy in place.
This should include a multi-step process that defines how security measures are implemented and maintained, with a goal of minimising the footprint of sensitive data and securing vital personal and business-critical and/or regulated data.
Even with the resources available to them, we see large well-known companies very publicly fall victim to cyber criminals and attacks. Therefore, Cyber Risk Insurance should be an important part of your strategy, to protect you and/or your business and customers.
We can provide tailored Cyber Risk Insurance solutions through our specialist Cyber Risk Insurer partner, Emergence Insurance.
Cyber Risk Insurance provides cover for first-party expenses and third-party liability from unauthorised access and use of data or software in your IT infrastructure.
- Physical theft and loss: Where information assets go missing through misplacement or malice.
- Cyber espionage: Unauthorised network or system access linked to state-affiliated or criminal sources with the motive of espionage.
- Hacking/Crimeware: Malicious or unauthorised IT infrastructure access or malware that aims to gain control of systems.
- Miscellaneous errors: Unintentional actions directly compromising the security attributes of information assets.
- Insider and privilege misuse: Unapproved or malicious use of organisations’ resources by insiders or external misuse through collusion.
- Cyber extortion: Attacks or threatened attacks against IT infrastructure, coupled with demands for money to stop attacks.
- Payment card skimmers: Skimming devices physically implanted on assets that read magnetic stripe data from payment cards.
- Web app attacks: Exploiting code-level vulnerabilities in applications and thwarting authentication mechanisms.
- Privacy error: Acts or omissions that lead to unauthorised disclosure of data including non-electronic data.
Contact us today to understand more about how to ensure you and/or your business, your customers and your reputation are protected from cybercrime, as well as how Personal Cyber Insurance can protect you at home.
*Australian Cyber Security Centre, cyber.gov.au
