CYBER criminals with access to cheap ransomware on the dark web were increasingly targeting small businesses, a NAB cyber security forum in Geelong was told.
In the wake of a cyber attack which recently derailed Barwon Health systems, NAB held the cyber security forum to outline trends in cyber crime and to overview security precautions.
The NAB’s manager of security advisory and awareness, Laura Hartley, said small business was targeted in about 45 per cent of cyber attacks, commonly initiated through phishing scams.
Ms Hartley said while ransomware once required a rare set of IT skills, software packages were being traded on the dark web for as low as $39.
“That’s why there has been an explosion of ransomware attacks in the past five years,” she said.
Ransomware locks victims’ data with an impenetrable encryption that makes independent retrieval of the information impossible.
“We see small business go out of business because of ransomware all the time,” Ms Hartley said.
media_cameraNAB'S DAvid Flood and cyber security awareness manager Laura Hartley.
Debunking the perception of a cyber criminal as a lone hacker cracking into a network, Ms Hartley said criminal cyber gangs were organised and businesslike in their operations, using a raft of techniques to get people to surrender personal details and IT permissions.
“They have moved from hacking the computer to hacking the human,” she said.
Mr Hartley said a high percentage of cyber attacks could be traced to phishing scams with SMS text phishing about twice as likely as email scams to trick their victims.
Hackers were also targeting remote network access logons to popular cloud-based software as a service products used in business environments.
Other business vul ..
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