[HEADS UP] Australia Continues to be Vulnerable to Cybercrimes as Half a Billion Has Been Lost to Scammers

Australia is the new hot spot for cyber attacks. The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) recently reported that Australia has been targeted by cybercriminals every 7 minutes, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission are stating that this year alone could lead to almost $2 billion of losses due to scams. 

Here's a breakdown of the attacks segmented by region: 

Source: 9News

The Optus and Medibank data breaches significantly contributed to the increase of attacks and exposed over 2 million customers that influenced this chart. The Northern Territory and Western Australia regions had the highest financial losses with a range of $29K - $40K worth of damage per report. 

The ACSC says there were also state actors and criminals targeting Australians with cyber space increasingly becoming a realm for both crime and warfare. In a statement by Abigail Bradshaw, the Head of the ACSC, "In the last 12 months, we witnessed this sustained integration of cyber with conventional warfare in Ukraine, and the coalescence of powerful and disruptive cybercrime, gangs and nation states combining efforts in that conflict." 

 But the type of most reported scams are due to a phishing email: 

Source: ABC News Australia

And unfortunately, not all attacks are being reported. According to Scamwatch, only 13% of victims reported cybercrime. In a statement by the ACCC, "We know scammers are relentlessly targeting Australians. Research commissioned by the ACCC shows that 96 per cent of the population was exposed to a scam in the five years to 2021. Half of the survey’s respondents were contacted weekly or daily by scammers, a figure expected to rise given current cyber security concerns."