To strive and excel in the digital economy, it’s innovation that enables organisations to stay competitive and agile. Unfortunately, more often than not, security is unjustly considered an impediment to this.
Whilst information security is a not a new thing, the push towards digitisation and state of the art technology has made it a critical element for businesses to ensure resilience.
With a substantial number of security and data breaches and more importantly, the alarming scale of their consequences, it is easy to understand why organisations are keen to embed new solutions into their operations and offerings.
However, in reality the looming threats are much bigger and attacks to organisations are imminent. As public and private organisations in Australia become increasingly digitised, the threat landscape is increasing, leaving us more vulnerable.
Last year alone, cybercrime cost Australian companies $US6.9 million, a rise of 26 per cent since 2017. On average, Australian businesses each experienced 65 security breaches – up from 53 in 2017 with instances of ransomware, malware, phishing, and social engineering, all increasing within the 12-month period.1
Despite our remote location, Australia has not escaped the impact of some major global ransomware attacks in the last 12 months, with many businesses falling victim to NotPetya and WannaCry which had a considerable impact on cybersecurity expenditure.
British Airways Data Breach
Hackers stole half a million British Airways customers’ personal info in 2018. The airline has been fined by UK’s data privacy authority and will pay £183.39 million ($230 million) to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for failing to protect its customers’ data. Login credentials, payment card numbers, travel books, and names and addresses were compromised in last year’s attack which diverted traffic from a BA website to a fraudulent page.2
Major Breach at an Australian University
19 years’ worth of personal data was stolen, affecting thousands of students, staff and visitors.3
Breach at Aussie Tech, Canva
Australian tech unicorn Canva was hacked, with the data of about 139 million users stolen. The personal information compromised included customer usernames, real names, email addresses as well as city and country information.4
So Where is the Light?
Businesses should first and foremost be approaching cybersecurity as a business enabler instead of viewing it in terms of risk.
By embedding security into the foundation of their business strategy, organisations will have ability to support business agility and optimised operations which with focus on customer centric delivery.
Agility
Organisations using agile methodologies can efficiently leverage cutting-edge technologies to create new products and services to provide better customer experience. Recent studies on digital business transformation predict more than 50% leaders in each industry will be displaced by digital disruption within the next five years.
“Digital transformation framework requires a stringent cyber security posture.”
By creating a strong cybersecurity stance, businesses will be able to confidently drive digital transformation and capture new growth opportunities. C-level executives committed to growth through digital business models and offerings, with cybersecurity as a critical foundation, have higher confidence in securing key digital capabilities, making them more willing to pursue digital offerings, accelerating innovation and time to market.
Productivity
Successful cyber-attacks can lead to unavailability of systems and information which ultimately disrupts business productivity as well severely damaging reputation.
Developing strong security measures enables organisations to operate without being vulnerable to risks and breaches. Companies that invest in cyber resilience will be better able to sustain disruptions in operations and performance and will have a definite advantage.
Benefits Realisation
Business opportunities are on the horizon…and so are the risks. It’s a matter of fact that a robust cybersecurity posture determines whether an organisation will remain in business or not.
“Being strategic rather than reactive.”
At Chamonix, we continuously leverage information & cyber security principles and best practices for our clients whether it is a digital strategy or strategic project.
This is woven in from the outset and continues through different stages of projects ensuring that the design & architecture is free of any security loop holes. The stringent design and architecture of applications act as a shield to cyber threats, giving our clients peace of mind that the product/ solution delivered to them is robust, state of the art and free from security defects and vulnerabilities.
Our trained, experienced & qualified managed services team also embed the Information & Cyber Security rules into our framework.
Our managed services team work constantly to deliver fast & efficient services to our clients to enable them to harvest new targeted business products and stay competitive and focused on their core business. This also enables our clients to remain compliant with regulations and evolving IT legislation.
References
1https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2019/australian-cybercrime-surge-costs-millions.html
2https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/08/ba-fine-customer-data-breach-british-airways
3https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/australian-national-university-hit-by-huge-data-breach
4https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2019/aussie-tech-darling-canva-hacked.html
5https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/security/cost-cybercrime-study
