Australian businesses may be complacent about their cyber risk, a new survey has found.
While 80% of organisations surveyed in the Exploring Cyber Security Maturity in Asia report from Frost & Sullivan and LogRhythm, said that they are confident that their data is yet to be compromised, risk management procedures left a lot to be desired.
In Australia, only 16% of those surveyed had an action plan in place in the event of a data breach, the survey revealed.
Four hundred businesses in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia were surveyed on their attitudes towards cyber risk and resilience and the results show that 50% believe that their data will not be compromised over the next year.
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Almost 31% of the businesses surveyed revealed that they would only perform a cyber risk assessment in the aftermath of a breach or on an ad-hoc basis when they suspect irregularities, while a quarter of all businesses had not undertaken a cyber risk assessment in the last 12 months.
Bill Taylor-Mountford, vice-president Asia-Pacific and Japan for LogRhythm, said that the results find businesses to be “rather more complacent” on their risk assessment procedures as many only undertake risk assessment after a breach.
“It is encouraging to hear that Asia-Pacific enterprises are confident about their resiliency against cyberthreats. However, these enterprises must ensure that their sense of confidence is not misplaced by proactively conducting cyber risk assessment within their organisation,” Taylor-Mountford said.
A better understanding of the threat an individual business faces on the cyber front can be used by brokers to encourage the uptake of cyber insurance and help organisations lower their premiums.
“Cyber-resilient enterprises could benefit from savings on unnecessary costs wasted on remediating a data breach, lower cyber insurance premiums, legal liabilities, and fines by the authorities,” the report states.
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