James Cotis, Director of Logical Insurance Brokers and FTA’s insurance advisor, provided a detailed commentary in the Autumn edition of Across Borders highlighting compliance issues associated with cyber breaches – refer HERE. 

James provides the following update: 

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has released its first quarterly report into notifiable data breaches on 11 April 2018. The report notes that there were 63 data breach notifications reported since the scheme began operation on 22 February 2018. Click HERE to read the report in full. 

Although the scheme is only 6 weeks old and still in its infancy, this equates to a rate of around two notifications every business day. Although these numbers represent a small snapshot it is alarming, particularly if extrapolated annually.

In terms of industry sectors, health services, legal and accounting led the way. We suspect it won’t be long before the logistics industry will feature in future reports.

Interestingly, human error was responsible for the majority of breaches reported. That means more emphasis needs to be placed on user education. Think before you click. Learning how to spot suspicious emails is an important defence.

The high rate of data breaches highlights the need for Cyber insurance, which is designed to tackle these and other IT related exposures. High quality Cyber insurance policies include cover for a major breach, including business interruption, forensic costs, additional labour costs (eg overtime to remedy issues), regulatory fines, litigation costs, crisis management costs (eg customer communications, public relations / brand damage), plus access to specialist quick response teams who can deliver much needed guidance and expertise at a critical time.

If you would like more information about how a carefully constructed Cyber insurance program can help protect your business, please feel free to contact us.