The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) stated that phishing attacks are the key source of data breaches in Australia. The OAIC recently released the quarterly statistics report on the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) occurred between July 1, 2018 and September 30, 2018. The latest report notified 245 data breaches that affected users’ personal information during the quarter.
Of the 245 reported breaches, the OAIC stated that 57 percent of incidents were caused by malicious attacks, 37 percent resulted from human error, and 6 percent were due to the system fault.
The report detailed the top five industries that suffered the most breaches are health service providers (45%), finance (35%) legal, accounting, management services (34%), private education providers (16%), and personal service providers (13%).
The OAIC publishes quarterly statistical information about data breach notifications received under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme to help the community, businesses, and government understand the scheme and the causes of data breaches.
Speaking on the importance of workforce training on cybersecurity awareness, the Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said, “Everyone who handles personal information in their work needs to understand how data breaches can occur, so we can work together to prevent them. Organizations and agencies need the right cyber security in place, but they also need to make sure work policies and processes support staff to protect personal information every day.”
“Our latest report shows 20 percent of data breaches over the quarter occurred when personal information was sent to the wrong recipient, by email, mail, fax or other means,” Ms. Falk added.
