It's not a common occurrence in the cybersecurity sector for an indicator to trend downward, but according to the ACSC's Annual Cyber Threat Report , that's what happened
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For the 2020–21 financial year, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) dealt with 1,630 incidents, or about 31 per week. Compared to the previous financial year, the total number of cybersecurity incidents in the 2020–21 financial year decreased by 28%.
Other good news includes that ACSC did not have to respond to any incidents in the top three of the six incident rating categories. Last year, it reported a single Category 1 incident and four Category 2 incidents.
However, the ACSC noted that other categories had a higher percentage this year with category 4 accounting for 49%, while last year it accounted for 35% of all incidents.
“The highest percentage of incidents that ACSC responded to involved low-level malicious activities, such as targeted reconnaissance, phishing, or non-sensitive data losses, representing more than half of cybersecurity incidents,” the report states.
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The report highlighted the growing amount of financial losses associated with business email compromise (BEC) even though the number of BEC incidents has decreased. Total losses reached AU$81.5 million, a 15% increase, and the average loss for each successful BEC transaction increased by 54% to AU$50,600.
Regarding ransomware, the report said there was a 15% increase with nearly 500 ransomware reports for the year.
Overall, the ACSC said it saw a 13% increase in cybercrime reports during 2020-21 to 67,500, with its per-minute count dropping from one report every 10 minutes to one every 8 minutes.
“A higher percentage of cybersecurity incidents this fiscal year were rated by the ACSC as ‘substantial’ in impact. This change is due in part to increased reporting of cybercriminal attacks on larger organizations and the observed impact of these attacks on victims, including several cases of data theft and/or services being provided offline,” the report states.
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Queensland led the way in reporting cybercrime ,followed by Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia. Although they trail in absolute numbers, WA and SA reported higher average economic losses. Overall, self-reported economic losses exceeded AU$33 billion.
