Riverina businesses facing an increased risk of cyber attacks post pandemic

CSU adjunct professor and cybersecurity expert Tanveer Zia said this upward trend has continued over the last couple of years.

"This trend is increasing," adjunct Professor Zia said.

"A report published by the Australian Cybersecurity Centre last September stated 62 per cent of small and medium sized businesses experienced a cyber incident."

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He said this was more common among businesses with as few as one and up to five workers.

But adjunct professor Zia said it is also not surprising.

"I don't think many small businesses had the budget to be ready to deal with cyber attacks when they went online [during the pandemic]," he said.

"For example, from that same ACSC report, 25 per cent of small and medium sized businesses were using operating systems on their computers, laptops or tablets that were Windows 7 or older.

"Some were still using Windows XP [from 2001]."

He said some of these businesses were spending less than $500 on cybersecurity.

Director of Riverina Digital Leon Ware said cyber attacks hit a wide range of businesses in Wagga and across the Riverina, not just those people might expect like financial services.

"Quite often we see aged care hit, councils and farmers in the ag industry," he said.

Mr Ware said quite often the effectiveness of cyber attacks is not necessarily how complex they are, but whether they can "trick a human into letting them into the system."

"We're seeing businesses of all sorts around Wagga get compromised in small ways like falling for a scam and sending money where they shouldn't.

"We're also seeing businesses compromised in big ways such as when access is given to an attacker to the computer systems and information they are holding onto is compromised and used for additional attacks."

Mr Ware said while the source of many cyber attacks can be traced to countries such as India and Nigeria, another surprising source was much closer to home.

"One of the biggest sources of cyber security issues is actually internal and from disgruntled staff," he said.

"People don't clean up when there is staff turnover, and they just log back into the services and cause havoc."

Mr Ware said there are several ways for businesses to help prevent cyber attacks, including training staff to be aware of risks and avoid cyber tricks. He also warned against acquiring free antivirus software.

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