Since the stress of the coronavirus pandemic 80% of Australian businesses have realised, they have numerous flaws in their cyber security. To clarify, a majority of Australian companies know their cyber security expenditure just isn’t enough. Many having experienced the terrible reality of their own security breach over the past few months which has highlighted all their security flaws. It’s a hard lesson learnt.

These figures began by analysing the responses from 373 executives responsible for their organisation’s cybersecurity. The company responsible for the report is Accenture Australia and New Zealand, who are currently in their third State of Cyber Resilience Research. Joseph Failla, the security lead at Accenture said, “the pandemic is putting a greater strain on existing security systems.” He states, “now more than ever, cyber security is an increasing challenge for Australian organisations, as the prevalence of sophisticated and insidious cyber-attacks continues to grow,” 

Importantly, Accenture noticed that from April to May 2019, only 43% of Australian businesses were actively protected by security measures. And so consequently, attacks are appearing through the cracks in security with 55 per cent of attacks breaching security measures and 62 per cent of breaches impacting business operations.

Even though, we see 91% of Australian companies spending on advanced technologies. In fact, companies are spending more than 20 per cent of their cybersecurity budget on these advancements.  Meanwhile 43% reported a rise in price of these advanced technologies and 11% recognised the costs increased by over 25%.

But almost 50% of security breaches are being spotted and repaired quickly. Subsequently, 62 per cent of breaches are being spotted in less than a day and 71 per cent are repaired within 15 days.

“When the enemy strikes, says Failla using threat intelligence and more strategic approaches to cyber security can help Australian organisations stay protected and better equipped to respond effectively.” And Failla goes on to suggest that “by becoming more resilient and agile, businesses will be able to grow confidently through this turbulent time”

Most importantly, the report found that business leaders who outlined strategies to fortify their defences were more likely to defend themselves against cyber threats. As a result, these leaders are three times are likely to stave off an attack compared to no leader in this area.  Secondly, when it comes to breaching security, four times as likely to detect breaches in less than a day. And thirdly, nearly three times more likely to fix breaches within 15 days.  And lastly, more than twice as likely to see breaches have no impact. This principle even applies to businesses around the world.

From the report Accenture determined that leaders are focused on areas such as operational speed, scale and maintaining existing cybersecurity investments. Firstly, if we take operational speed, leaders are seeing just how quickly they can spot breaches, action their response and get back to their normal operations. 

Secondly, they are also making good use of technology that enabled quick responses. These include technologies with artificial intelligence (AI) and security orchestration automation and response (SOAR). Similarly, both rank as the highest level of priority for cyber security integration.

In addition, successful leaders were found to be four times better at scaling security technology. And twice as better at defending against attacks in contrast than their peers, the non leaders.

Leaders that were able to maintain existing investments are spending evenly across the board. These include scanning and piloting new capabilities, scaling new capabilities and sustaining existing investments.