New global research from Unisys reveals that 86 per cent of critical infrastructure providers in Australia and New Zealand have been breached in the past year.
Executives were surveyed at companies responsible for power, water and other critical functions. Globally, nearly 70 per cent reported at least one security breach that led to the loss of confidential information or disruption of operations in the past 12 months.
Unisys commissioned the Ponemon Institute to survey 599 business and IT decision makers across 13 countries, including 49 from Australia and New Zealand.
Just 10 per cent of A/NZ respondents describe their organisation's IT security programme or activities as mature. Of those which suffered a data breach in the past year, most attributed it to an internal accident or mistake and negligent insiders.
Despite this, only 6 per cent said they provide cybersecurity training for all employees.
The survey found that 67 per cent of ANZ respondents anticipated one or more serious attacks in the coming year. Just 18 per cent ranked security as one of the top five strategic priorities for their organisation, yet 65 per cent named their top business priority as minimising downtime.
Almost half (48 per cent) of A/NZ critical infrastructure providers surveyed said they had suffered security incidents due to the use of insecure networks, and 33 per cent were caused by unmanaged mobile devices and employee use of social networks.