29 data losses per day as ANZ companies struggle with security

A staggering 90 percent of Australian and New Zealand organisations experienced data loss events, according to Check Point Software Technologies' 2014 Security Report.

On average, 29 data loss events occur in Australia and New Zealand every day, exemplified through the proliferation of breaches and targeted attacks to steal consumer and business data.

This trend highlights the need for threat intelligence and an architectural approach to security to fight the changing threat landscape.

The Australia and New Zealand figures from Check Point’s 2014 Security Report, the company’s second annual report uncovering the major threat trends that impacted organisations across the world, were released this week at CPX Melbourne 2014.

In a world of ever-changing cyber threats, organisations in Australia and New Zealand must understand the nature of the latest exploits, and how their networks are potentially impacted.

Of the ANZ companies studied for the report:

- 51 percent of organisations experienced credit card data loss events, including 75 
percent of organisations in the finance industry.

- 34 percent of organisations experienced data loss events surrounding sensitive 
personal information, 32 percent experienced events involving salary information, 
while 29 percent experienced a data loss event relating to business data records.

- 98 percent of organisations studied have high risk applications running on their 
networks, including remote administration (91%), file storage and sharing (88%), P2P file sharing (82%), and anonymisers (91%).

The study revealed that Australia and New Zealand host 19 percent of the world’s malicious files. Australia has the second highest figure for hosting malicious files after the US.

The report also showed that, with five percent of the world’s malicious websites, Australia was the country with the fourth highest percentage of malicious websites hosted, after the US (38%), Ukraine (25%) and Russia (15%).

“Our 2014 Security Report provides a bird’s eye view into the degree of infiltration and sophistication of new threats," says Kurt Hansen, managing director at Check Point Software Technologies ANZ.

"We found that organisations are often surprised by the severity of bot infections and the various threats that lurk on their networks.

“Enterprises need to arm themselves with both cyber threat awareness and the appropriate security architecture to address these evolving challenges.”

The Check Point 2014 Security Report reveals the prevalence and growth of threats on enterprise networks, through information obtained over the course of 2013.

This report is based on collaborative research and in-depth analysis of over 200,000 hours of monitored network traffic, from more than 9,000 Threat Prevention gateways, across organisations in 122 countries.