Security Australian govt. issues cyber security warning

At a press conference on 19th June 2020, Scott Morison, the Prime Minister at the time, urged Australian government institutions to receive expert advice on cyber security and take defensive measures to protect themselves against cyberattacks. He also advised that for cyber security, the entire community including industry and individuals needed to make efforts.

The Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has pointed out high-priority cyber security measures that should be taken to mitigate damage from cyberattacks. The Australian federal government is encouraging victims of cyberattacks to report the attacks.

Japanese companies in Australia have also been the targets of cyberattacks.

While no single mitigation strategy is guaranteed to prevent cyber security incidents, organisations are recommended to implement eight essential mitigation strategies as a baseline.

This baseline, known as the Essential Eight, makes it much harder for adversaries to compromise systems. Furthermore, implementing the Essential Eight proactively can be more cost-effective in terms of time, money and effort than having to respond to a large-scale cyber security incident.

There is a suggested implementation order for each adversary to assist organisations in building a strong cyber security posture for their systems. Once organisations have implemented their desired mitigation strategies to an initial level, they should focus on increasing the maturity of their implementation such that they eventually reach full alignment with the intent of each mitigation strategy.

Once a security incident occurs, the response costs in terms of time, money and labor are massive. Now with COVID-19 resulting in companies around the world implementing a sudden start to remote work, the security of those companies must be strengthened.

At KDDI Australia, to aid in implementing the Essential Eight and otherwise operating your IT assets securely, we will work with you to check the state of your current IT environment. Since the recommended security measures require that they be continuously implemented, we can propose IT solutions to reduce your operational workload and we can also provide IT management outsourcing. Feel free to contact us to discuss how we can help with your IT needs.