Cyber Crime

Why “EVERY” Organisation is at Risk of Cyber Crime

Aug 28, 2022

It should come as no surprise that cyber-attacks pose an increasingly large threat to Australian organisations. The threat is real, the Australian Federal Government has a department dedicated to this threat.

In fact, the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD’s) Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has specifically warned about, “an increase in the number of cyber crime reports and cyber security incidents,” as well as “an increase in frequency and sophistication of operations by a range of state-based actors and cybercriminal syndicates” and “an increase in the speed in which malicious actors have researched and then pivoted to exploit publicly-released vulnerabilities.”

Yet, despite these trends, many organisations hold outdated notions about both the criminals perpetrating these attacks and their specific exposure to cyber crime.

Educating business owners of this business risk can be challenging. Whilst hackers do continue to pursue major targets — as the big corporate names that make the 6 o’clock news, its all the not so well-known companies we don’t hear about that are also being impacted — every organisation represents a potential target for cyber attacks.

Here’s some examples why organisations of all sizes and sophistication need to be aware of the risk of cyber crime, as well as the steps they can take to protect themselves.

Why Every Organisation is at Risk of Cyber Crime

One of the most common thought processors we hear when talking to clients regarding the threat of cyberattacks is, “it’s not going to happen to me.”

To a degree, it’s understandable. If you’re a small organisation, or if you don’t believe you have anything worthwhile to steal, you may see yourself as being less of a target for direct attacks. But as you’ll see, these concerns are irrelevant. You don’t have to be specifically targeted to suffer losses from a cyber-attack.

For example, consider:

Unsuspecting employees can be lured into broad phishing attacks that expose you to vulnerabilities.

Many of today’s most effective cyber-attacks are not actually targeting individual stakeholders. Broad phishing attacks may send compromised links to thousands of individuals at random, hoping that at least some of the recipients will click them. If one of your employees clicks a phishing link from a networked device, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t your organisation that was specifically targeted. Your business is now compromised.

Disgruntled employees may expose your security by downloading company data without your knowledge.

Would you know if one of your employees’ downloaded data on your customers, products, R&D efforts, or suppliers? This type of information may have tremendous value to a criminal — yet because ‘the attack is coming from inside the house’, all the external firewalls in the world won’t keep you safe.

Even if you don’t have sensitive or proprietary data, others in your network might.

Sure, the information in your systems may not have much value on its own. But consider your clients. Do any of them have sensitive information? If hackers can access organisations in your network by breaching your defences, you could face not only liability issues for failing to secure your systems, but significant relationship damage and loss of trust with your customers.

Hackers have entered your system and locked you out of all your files.

Even if you feel your data is irrelevant and hackers would not be interested. The data is important – to you! More than likely your business may not be able to run smoothly with-out it. You need those files, programs, data, etc – it could cost you a lot to get the files and data unlocked – if they unlock it after you have paid hard earned money. Every organisation represents a potential target for cyber-attacks. Business owners need to understand this is real and get the necessary protection in place.

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