World Backup Day should serve as a timely reminder to Australian businesses about their responsibility to protect customer data, according to global cloud storage company Wasabi Technologies.
Craig Stockdale, Wasabi’s Managing Director of Australian and New Zealand channels warns that adequate and regular backup, rigorous security measures and prompt reporting of breaches are essential when handling customer data
“As custodians of important and often sensitive data, companies need to take every possible step to protect that data,” Stockdale said. “This includes notifying authorities in a timely fashion in the event of a breach.”
Stockdale said World Backup Day (31 March), aimed at consumers saving their “precious memories”, should also prompt companies to check their backup strategy, as well as security measures such as multifactor authentication and automatic software updates.
“Customer and supplier data is the lifeblood of companies,” he said. “Viruses, ransomware attacks, equipment failures and other incidents can destroy data and do irreparable harm to a business, impairing worker productivity, customer satisfaction and sales.
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“In working with Australian customers, we have noticed an increasing awareness of the value of having an immutable and offsite copy of their data - which can enable them to restore services to customers quickly when systems fail or other incidents destroy data.”
Wasabi notes that the Federal Government has put the cost of data breaches to Australian businesses at more than $29 billion a year, with government statistics showing 483 notifiable breaches in the 6 months to December 2023.
Following Optus and Medibank cyber-attacks, the Federal government announced that penalties for not promptly reporting cyber breaches would increase substantially. The current penalties under the Privacy Act, for failing to report a data breach of “personal information which poses a likely risk of serious harm to affected individuals,” range from $444,000 for individuals and up to $2.2 million for companies.
“Cyber governance and cyber risk need to be top-of-mind concerns for directors across all business sectors, in the wake of the cyber-attacks against Optus, Medibank and other Australian companies,” Craig Stockdale concluded.