MailGuard Blog

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are currently hot property, on the wish and hit lists of just about every company on the planet.

Another day, another red-faced exec wondering how his company just managed to get scammed out of thousands of dollars. Embarrassing? Yes. Uncommon? No.

It’s officially silly (shopping) season. Inboxes around the world are starting to fill up with crazy hot sales, festive deals, and year-end promotions.

Shady and shifty or just another regular Jo? Much like Ted Bundy was considered a charismatic guy, you can never be too sure of the biggest personnel threats to your organisation. Don’t we always see in the news that it’s Susan the lovely office manager who seems to be the one channeling company funds into her own accounts? 

“How did I fall for that?”

Released last week, Gemalto’s Breach Level Index found that over 4.5 billion data records were breached in the first half of this year - up 1,751% from the same time last year. That translates to 291 data records being breached per second in the first half of 2018.

What is cybersecurity?
If you walked around your office and asked people that question, what sort of answers do you think, you’d get?

The image many businesspeople have of cybercrime is a teenager with a grubby hoody hunched over a laptop hammering code into a flickering screen that’s like something out of The Matrix. The imaginary teen finds a backdoor into a bank’s server admin page, and typing like fury beats the computer in a showdown of quick-draw typing.

Does defeating cybercriminals mean we need to try thinking like they do?

The kind of people who commit cybercrime aren’t CEO material. They aren’t even necessarily the I.T. whiz or hacker type; cybercrime doesn’t require a serious technical skill set. The crooks behind online fraud attacks are using technology, certainly, but they are consumers, not experts.

You have your solicitor look over contracts before they’re signed.
Your accountant examines your books to find any irregularities.
There are checks and balances in place to monitor purchases, invoicing, payroll and transactions of every kind.
You’re confident that your company’s financial integrity is well protected, but what about the online realm?

There’s a lot about online crime that’s ambiguous and confusing, but the damage it’s doing is all too clear. Recent research figures released by the FBI and reports from independent cybersecurity experts estimate that the damage bill from cybercrime in 2018 will reach more than US$12 billion dollars.

‘Alone we will fail,’ was the message from Alastair MacGibbon, Head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre and keynote speaker at MailGuard’s2018 Cybersecurity Awareness Luncheon.

On Tuesday 6 March, MailGuard collaborated with PWC and Microsoft to bring together CEOs and cybersecurity experts in a forum focussed on the rise of cybercrime and the challenges it presents for business.

Cybercrime and data-security are a growing challenge here in Australia. The Australian Government recently published figures estimating that cybercrime costs our economy about AU$1 billion annually and if the international trends are anything to go by, that figure will be growing rapidly over the next few years.

These are interesting times to be in business. The fastest pace of industrial development in history. Huge opportunities. Huge risks. An economic environment that rewards innovation but is also incredibly volatile.

“During the holiday season, it's easy to forget that sometimes the best gift of all is simply the gift of time.” - Kate Klise - author and journalist.

I’ve just come back from a holiday break with my family. It was a welcome opportunity to focus on my loved ones, but it also gave me some time for reflection.