Media giant Nine Entertainment Co has requested the assistance from Australian government after a major cyber attack hit its broadcast systems last Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, Australian Parliament was also investigating a potential cyber attack in Canberra on Sunday evening, as Nine worked to resolve the issue, which is affecting government-issued smartphones and tablets, raising fears of a widespread cyber-attack.
Assistant Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie said he was “not surprised” about the attack. He said it was a warning to all businesses that they need to be aware of potential threats. Hastie added:
“This is a timely reminder that Australians cannot be complacent about their cyber security. Cyber security is a team effort and a shared responsibility. It is vital that Australian businesses and organisations are alert to threats and take the necessary steps to ensure our digital sovereignty.”
According to 9News, it has been described as a sophisticated and calculated attack and has fundamentally disrupted how the network delivers and presents news.
While it is not clear if there is any link between the Parliament House and Nine attacks, it raises concerns about the vulnerability of businesses in Australia to cyber attacks, and questions about how they can improve cyber security of their business to protect themselves from future threats.
WhiteHawk - Comprehensive Cyber Protection for Your Business
WhiteHawk Limited (ASX: WHK) is the first global online cybersecurity exchange enabling businesses of all sizes to take smart action against cybercrime. WhiteHawk is at the forefront of this industry and is receiving a lot of interest at the moment.
WhiteHawk's next-generation risk monitoring and prioritisation approaches, leverage publicly available data sets, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based analytics, online risk platforms and virtual consults that scale to mitigate a breadth of digital age risks in near real-time. Their methods have been tested and evolved with government departments and fortune 500 companies.
WhiteHawk's response to Cybercrime
Terry Roberts is former Deputy Director of US Naval Intelligence and CEO/Founder of ASX-listed cyber security firm WhiteHawk (WHK).
According to how ineffective and costly businesses' current solutions to today's Cyber State Actor or Criminal attacks. She said that we were "primarily simply doing more of the same: networks consisting of primarily legacy IT infrastructure and business applications, next-day information sharing of known-knowns, additive cybersecurity tools and processes and manpower intensive compliance and controls – which continues to prove ineffective and costly. We keep taking rifles to a war in outer space and wonder why we are losing".
Terry explains how cyber technology has advanced over the years. She goes on to outline a few methods businesses can do to improve their cybersecurity;
"Thanks to the scale of global Cyber R&D, innovation and product evolution over the past decade, we now have a breadth of continuous risk based monitoring, prioritisation, and validation by real-time SaaS risk and red team services that provide a “High-End Hacker View” of the “truth” of a company, organisation or sector’s vulnerabilities.
With validated cyber risk baselines, a risk mitigation migration plan can be smartly implemented leveraging next generation technologies, automation and Digital Age Resilience principles. And because it is continuous, you can keep up with the ever changing threat landscape, methods and actors – preventing or mitigating a majority of the disruption."
In addition to relying on technology, Terry says that it's absolutely necessary for business owners to step up and control their business' vulnerability to cybercrime;
"Today we need Leaders, Executives and Boards to stop reacting and lamenting and take ownership of their company or organisation’s risks, mapped to affordable mitigation strategies. Stop delegating everything to one expert, one team or one managed service provider and put checks and balances in place as we do with financial risk. "
Terry Roberts, CEO of WhiteHawk Inc
Terry closes by saying that businesses need to start utilising Cyber Intelligence and take action as soon as possible to protect themselves from cyber risks;
"WhiteHawk along with many others have created next generation Cyber Risk Programs and we challenge all to start to leverage them. After all, what do you have to lose – but more."
For more information about Cyber Intelligence, read our article on What Is Cyber Intelligence & How Can It Help Your Business?
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