In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) released alerts regarding a heightened risk of cyber-attacks in Australia.
Over the 2020-2021 financial year the ACSC recorded 67,500 Cyber reports, nearly 13 percent more than the year before. To put this into greater understanding for you, this number of Cyber Attacks is equivalent to one every 8 minutes for the whole year. What’s to stop you or your business from being next?
We’ve all read about these threats, and how the consequences of a Cyber Attack can significantly impact your business. With systems down and loss of data, you may have no option but to cease trading. These threats can also affect clients that rely on you for products and services, or commercial contracts you may have in place.
So how do you prevent this?
We’ve developed 4 important steps to assist you in preventing your company from experiencing cyber threats and breaches.
- Update your devices to protect important information.
Cybercriminals are always looking for a way to get into your devices. Keeping your software up to date prevents releasing any gaps that a cybercriminal can worm their way in to. The best way to do this is to ensure you are downloading the latest software. Turning automatic downloads on means you never forget to update your software.
- Protect your accounts with multi-factor authentication.
Multi-factor authentication is a secure measure that requires multiple security measures to retrieve access to a platform or server. This can mean a pin number, fingerprint, password, login, email or sms. While it may be easy for cybercriminals to steal one form of identity, multi-factor authentication means they will need all the required security measures to gain access to your account.
- Back up data regularly to the cloud or an external hard drive.
It is important to back up your data regularly with the risk of your device being damaged, lost, destroyed, or hacked. If your device or network is not backed up, it can be very expensive if not impossible to recover your data.
- Purchase cyber liability insurance coverage
You can try to avoid cyber threats; however, the reality is you can never completely secure your systems from a cyber-attack. You can, however, ensure that in the event you are the victim of an attack, you have a backup.
The backup we are referring to is cyber liability insurance. While this won’t stop a cyber-attack, this type of insurance policy can manage the incident to minimise its impact on your business and cover the related costs. The cost of insurance coverage will always be far less than the cost of closing a business.
For more information on how to protect yourself from cyber attacks visit the ACSC website.
To learn more about cyber liability insurance contact us today
To speak to one of our professional brokers about cyber liability insurance call 1300 305 834 or enquire via our website contact form.
Cover is subject to the policy terms, conditions, and exclusions.
This information is general in nature. To read our general advice warning click here.
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