2017 Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Threat Report

Last month the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security, Dan Tehan MP, released the 2017 Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Threat Report. This report outlines the types of threats and trends now emerging within the Australian cyber landscape.

Mr Tehan says, “…cyber security is not just the business of national security, but something that must become second nature to all Australians. Cyber security is not just the domain of our intelligence agencies or our defence forces [it’s]… as relevant for mums and dads, small business owners and local communities, to keep their data, their money and their identities secure.”

As we know, the nature of cybercrime is fast evolving; but its impact is not only damaging it’s far reaching, Mr Tehan says, “over the past year, we have seen increased targeting of trusted third parties, particularly service providers. These companies are highly attractive targets as they can provide access into a range of primary targets.”

Cyber criminals employ a range of tactics to infiltrate our data, with ransomware being a popular means of extortion. This type of crime enables cyber criminals access to a large amount of data from a broad range of victims. As we can see it’s not only large corporates who are vulnerable.

Mr Tehan says ransomware is used to take advantage of known weaknesses in our cyber defences and that we need to be on the front foot when it comes to cyber security, saying “backing up data and proven data restoration processes are vital to mitigate data being encrypted, corrupted or deleted by ransomware.”

Read the 2017 Australian Cyber Security Centre Threat Report.