AI-powered cyber attacks are increasing - and SMEs are underprepared
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Welcome to Fear and Greed Q&A, where we ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more. I'm Sean Aylmer. Less than half of all Australian small businesses prioritise cyber security and sole traders are the least prepared. The vast majority, almost 80%, lack a cyber response plan and two in five take no action after experiencing a cyber incident. That's according to new research commissioned by Telco Optus, which suggests Australian SMEs are dangerously underprepared from a cyber attack. Carissa Breen is a cyber security expert doing some work with Optus. Carissa, welcome to Fear and Greed.
Thanks, Sean. Wonderful to be here. Thanks for having me.
How big a problem is cybercrime for small business in this country?
What are the current cybersecurity challenges faced by small businesses in Australia?
Yeah, look, I think that's a good question simply because it's growing. It's growing for small businesses. As we know, majority of businesses in Australia are made up of SMEs. And I think I would say what's probably changed the most, Sean, is with AI attacks that we're seeing on the news, that we're hearing about, it's really accelerated it. And I think that small businesses aren't selectively being targeted. they're just being swept up why because ai's got the acceleration to do that and it's got the scale to do that and as you mentioned before businesses are underprepared because there's not this mindset that they are too small to be targeted and what's interesting about that stat is it hasn't probably changed over the years but again i think that
Because of AI, it's probably just proliferated the response now to these businesses being afraid of being hit by a cybercrime. But then also 20% aren't spending time on cybersecurity at all. And there's probably a myriad of reasons as to why. But some of these stats don't really surprise me at the end of the day.
Okay, we'll get to the why in a moment, but what is the typical attack on an SME? Does it go in waves? It seems to be trends. Fishing was at one point. What's popular right now?
I think what's popular is it's continuous because again, AI has got the scale to be able to do that. I mean, a typical attack to give you some perspective might start quite small. So it could be compromised login, phishing email. And again, because of AI with phishing emails, it's really easy now to make those emails look really, really professional as opposed to back in the day where people would slip up and there'd be an error and we could detect it as a human. So I think that now what's changed is there is a small weakness that people can get in, cyber criminals get in and then move laterally and then create bigger problems down the track. And I think that there's some other stats here I would like to call out as well is that phishing and email scams are most common in 38%.
And the other one which is interesting as well is hackers impersonate a trusted contact at 24%. And what I mean by that is someone pretending that they're a CFO calling you up, Sean, and saying, hey, can you wire transfer X amount because of a deep fake or a voice impersonated style attack? And then, of course, the money gets transferred and then it becomes a major problem. So that's another thing as well that can be hard to detect, especially for small businesses that aren't really used to dealing with this type of stuff.
Okay. So why aren't small businesses doing anything about it? Is it because they're not used to malware and phishing attacks?
Well, look, I think that's a good question. I think there's a number of reasons. Number one would be, again, going back to they feel super small. And again, I've come from a banking and finance background historically. They traditionally would go after the big boys, the big players and get a lot of money. But now, because we can spread those attacks against millions of small businesses, they're easy hits. I think as well that perhaps there is... not enough resources out there to really understand, well, where do I start?
How is AI changing the landscape of cyber attacks?
People feel overwhelmed as it is. You've got so many technology and cybersecurity vendors really just bombarding you at the end of the day.
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