Australian business has 'head in sand' over cyber security

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26 March 2018

Too many Australian businesses have their "heads in the sand" about cyber security according to Minister for Cyber Security, Angus Taylor.

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Ignorance is "poor excuse"

This is the message that Angus Taylor wants to get across to Australian business.

"Not knowing how to protect client or customer data is becoming a poor excuse.

"There is a lot of information now available on cyber sec­urity. The onus is with business operators, with organisations and with government agencies, to put measures in place to reduce the risk of data breaches.”

We must bring the reality of the threat to every person in Australia

Taylor has urged every Australian to demand that companies and organisations that collect their personal data, are putting protective measures in place. 

"We must bring the reality of the threat to every person in Australia. The risk and costs are too great if we fail.

"Words like malware, denial of service attack or phishing don’t mean very much to the average Australian. But the consequence of those three terms do – you can lose your entire business overnight. 

“We must get better at communicating this to the general public. Too many of our companies, and I'm not just talking about mum-and-dad operations, have their heads in the sand about this."

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Facebook joins data breach 'hall of shame'

Just this week Facebook has joined the list of major global companies who have compromised the data of their users. The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating the misuse of personal data from 50 million Facebook users. The data was acquired by an external researcher who claimed to be collecting it for academic purposes but who passed it onto Cambridge Analytica, a company that served as Donald Trump’s data operations team during the 2016 election. 

Watch the Channel 4 News investigation that uncovered the tactics of Cambridge Analytica.

 

In November 2017, Uber confirmed that it had lost the personal details of 600,000 drivers and customers in the United States. The company paid hackers $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet. 

In May 2017, US retail giant Target agreed to pay $18.5 million to settle claims by 47 states resulting from a massive data breach in late 2013. Up to 40 million customers had their credit card details exposed after hackers accessed the company's Point of Sale system.

Closer to home, in October 2016 the Australian Red Cross Blood Service 'lost' the private information of 550,00 blood donors from between 2010 and 2016. The data came from an online application form and included "personal details" and identifying information including names, gender, addresses and dates of birth. 

 EMM secures devices and data

 

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