47% of ANZ businesses had a data breach in past year

Nearly half (47%) of ANZ businesses have experienced a data breach in the past 12 months, according to Thales.

The company’s latest annual Global Data Threat Report, conducted by 451 Research, found more than half (55%) of organisations in ANZ have seen an increase in the volume, severity and/or scope of cyber attacks in the past 12 months.

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of ANZ businesses have experienced a breach in the past, with malware and ransomware some of the most common threats facing the businesses, the report states.

The research also found that only one in four ANZ businesses can fully classify their data, and half of businesses have failed a compliance audit in the past 12 months.

Just 23% of ANZ organisations have a complete understanding of where there data is stored, leaving data at risk.

One factor responsible these difficulties is the increasing volume of data being stored in the cloud. In APAC, 31% of respondents have 41–50% of their data stored in an external cloud, and a quarter have more than half of their data in the cloud.

The most popular methods of securing sensitive data in the cloud include encryption (selected by 67% of APAC respondents), key management (58%) and tokenisation of data (52%).

Thales ANZ Director of Cloud Protection and Licensing Activities Brian Grant said an increasing reliance on multi-cloud environments and the growing number of cyber threats is making security more challenging.

“It is concerning that a large number of organisations still don’t know where all their data is stored or are failing compliance audits, in particular as those are just the first step to achieving effective cyber protection,” he said.

“This is why embedded security through data anonymisation and Zero Trust strategies need to be prioritised if we want to futureproof our digitised economy, guarantee privacy, and in the process avoid costly cyber incidents and data breach remediations.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Brian Jackson