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Cyber attacks ruled as biggest issue facing Australia

Australians have ruled that the most significant international issue facing the nation is foreign cyber attacks.

user icon Daniel Croft
Wed, 21 Jun 2023
Cyber attacks ruled as biggest issue facing Australia
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According to a survey of Australians conducted by the Lowy Institute, cyber attacks now top the list of most concerning issues facing the country, with seven in 10 (68 per cent of respondents) ruling that foreign cyber attacks were a “critical threat” to Australia in the next decade.

An additional 30 per cent ruled the issue “an important but not critical threat”, and only 1 per cent ruled it “not an important threat at all”.

This has come as a result of the wave of major cyber attacks that have affected Australian organisations, institutions, and people over the last 12 months, with the trio of high-profile attacks on Optus Medibank and Latitude Financial bringing the issue of cyber security to the forefront of people’s minds.

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“[This] follows three of the most significant corporate data breaches in Australian history: in late 2022, Optus and Medibank user data was hacked and held for ransom, with hackers releasing sensitive health records of some Medibank customers on the dark web,” Lowy’s report said.

“During fieldwork for this poll, Latitude Financial disclosed a data breach that eventually saw some 14 million customer records compromised.”

Despite trust in nations like China and Russia, which are known to host and back many of the threat groups behind these major attacks, alongside growing political tensions between Australia and China, and the war between Russia and Ukraine, Australians are feeling safer overall.

Lowy said that this has actually contributed to the sentiment that Australians have towards cyber attacks, as other issues have become less of a concern.

“[The increased concern over international cyber attacks] comes as perceptions of other threats — including COVID-19 and Russian and Chinese foreign policies — have receded,” it said.

The new finding from Lowy comes as the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security Clare O’Neil has said that Australia must prepare for a “dystopian future” in which threat actors and organisations will hold entire digitally connected cities to ransom.

“[A future where] our interconnected cities are held hostage through interference in everything from traffic lights to surgery schedules,” she said in a speech at Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Sydney Dialogue in April.

Minister O’Neil said that state-sponsored actors are the “apex predators” due to their extensive scale and sophisticated tools, and she said that they “can be the hardest threat to tackle, demanding the full spectrum of our brightest minds and deepest technical knowledge to detect and deter”.

However, she also said that “public enemy number one” are those threat actors who are financially motivated.

“These groups subvert legitimate business models for financial gain, creating online portals for ‘hacking as a service’ where anyone can purchase the tools and support necessary to conduct a cyber incident or data, especially in the form of a ransomware attack,” she said.

Daniel Croft

Daniel Croft

Born in the heart of Western Sydney, Daniel Croft is a passionate journalist with an understanding for and experience writing in the technology space. Having studied at Macquarie University, he joined Momentum Media in 2022, writing across a number of publications including Australian Aviation, Cyber Security Connect and Defence Connect. Outside of writing, Daniel has a keen interest in music, and spends his time playing in bands around Sydney.

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