Australian small businesses lagging behind on cybersecurity
Although cybersecurity is a major concern for Australian businesses, small businesses do not have dedicated security budgets.
A new study has found that Australian small businesses are struggling when it comes to cybersecurity, with only 44% of businesses with fewer than 50 employees having a dedicated security budget.
Vanta’s Trust Management Company Trust state The report shows that although 58% of Australian businesses view cybersecurity threats as their top concern, small businesses are struggling.
Only 66% of small businesses are confident they can explain the impact of any security program on their business, while AI poses an even bigger challenge, with only 13% of small businesses auditing AI models to comply with data privacy regulations.
Another alarming figure from the report is that 43% of Australian businesses face cyber threats more than once a week.
According to Jonathon Coleman, Vanta’s general manager for APAC, “Australian businesses are waking up to the reality of cyber threats”, but only large companies are able to adequately prepare for a cyber incident.
“But awareness is only half the battle. Action is the other half – and as larger companies invest more in their own cyber protection, the vulnerabilities left in small business defenses become even more obvious to attackers, who tend to be opportunistic in nature,” Coleman said.
“Compliance is a major step forward in improving cybersecurity, but historically the time and effort required for organizations to become compliant has been prohibitive. But we are now in the age of AI, where organizations can automate much of the compliance work, helping to make it less of a check-box exercise and more of an ongoing, robust security measure that helps to stimulate activity.
Paul Hawkins, Head of Information Security at CipherStash, has some advice for small businesses, especially start-ups.
“There are three practical things I would suggest to any start-up exploring cybersecurity for the first time. The first is to identify what you have. Understand which service providers you use, where you store your and your customers’ data, and gain visibility into your IT assets,” Hawkins said.
“Second, lay the foundation of your identity. Centralize your systems around one identity provider and reduce the number of long-lived login credentials to make it easier to revoke access at any time.
“And finally, use managed services for security like AWS Guard Duty or Vanta to gain visibility and security capabilities without having to build and operate these systems yourself.
Vanta Trust state The report is based on research carried out in July and August 2024 and responses from 2,500 IT and business leaders from Australia, the UK and the US.
