A sharp increase in the number of data breaches caused by ransomware attacks and the highest ever number of monthly notifications has been recorded over the past six months.
The findings are contained in the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s eighth notifiable data breaches report [pdf] released on Friday.
The report, which now covers a six-monthly period, reveals 518 notifications were received by the privacy and freedom of information authority between January and June 2020.
This represents a three percent decrease on the 532 notifications received between July and December last year, but a 16 percent increase for the same period last year.
OAIC also said that May saw the most data breach notifications than “in any calendar month since the scheme began in February 2018”, with 124 notifications received.
But no “specific cause for the increase” was identified, despite a small increase in notifications attributed to human error (39 percent versus 34 percent for the overall reporting period).
The majority of breaches continue to be the result of malicious or criminal attacks, which accounted for 317 notifications or 61 percent - a slight decrease on the previous six months.
These stemmed mostly from cyber incidents (218 notifications) resulting from “phishing, malware, ransomware, brute-force attacks and compromised or stolen credentials”.
“Malicious actors and criminals are responsible for three in five data breaches notified to the OAIC over the past six months,” information and privacy commissioner Angelene Falk said
“This includes ransomware attacks, where a strain of malicious software is used to encrypt data and render it unusable or inaccessible.”
She said ransomware was now ..
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