The federal government was involved in 436 incidents and the states 367. Critical infrastructure such as electricity, health and communications providers – which will be subjected to new stringent cyber-security requirements – made up 35 per cent of incidents.
While most attacks had a moderate impact or caused only temporary disruption, 72 incidents involved systems such as national security, essential services and critical national infrastructure.
Disruption to essential services
One attack – the one that Mr Morrison and Senator Reynolds issued an urgent warning about in June – was rated in the most severe category, but government and business efforts to strengthen cyber defences had prevented sustained disruption to essential services.
The government has not publicly attributed blame for the attack, other than to say it was committed by a sophisticated state-based actor, but agencies believe China is the culprit.
"I can assure you that threat has not diminished, in fact, it has increased," Senator Reynolds said of activity since the June 19 announcement.
She said cyber attacks were blurring the gap between peace and war.
"We are now facing an environment where cyber-enabled activities have the potential to drive disinformation and also directly support interference in our economy, interference in our political system and also in what we see as critical infrastructure but more widely across many businesses and organisations in our economy," she said.
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At the other end of the spectrum were "opportunistic cyber criminals who target Australians and Australian companies for financial gains", Senator Reynolds said.
To bolster the nation's cyber defences, the government recently unveiled a $1.6 billion cyber strategy that includes extra staff and powers for the Australian Signals Directorate to intervene and ward off atta ..
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