Overhyping Hinders Cyber Security Knowledge, says Australian Government

An Australian Cyber-Security Centre report claims that overhyping and misuse of terms related to cyber security have hindered the public’s understanding of the subject.

The 2016 Threat Report said:

“The term ‘cyber-attack’ is well-entrenched within the information security community, where it is used to broadly describe malicious activity against a computer network or system.”

The report talks about a interruption to the 2016 Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) web-based Census. After falling victim to a number of DDos incidents, to secure any census data submitted up to that point (August 9, 2016), the ABS, along with service provider IMB, temporarily made the website inaccessible.

The report said:

“Australia treats cyber-attacks as extremely serious and provocative events. Fortunately, Australia still has not been subjected to malicious cyber-activity that could constitute a cyber-attack.”

The report says that the media reported that a “foreign cyber-attack” caused the issue. The term resulted in an increased sense of risk and threat, and growing public concerns over the safety of their data, and led to media speculation regarding tradecraft, nation state motivations, as well as possible further ‘attacks’.

The more businesses owners fail to understand cyber security and its potential repercussions, the more they are putting their company at risk from a breach. By adopting a realistic stance to the subject and ensuring that their IT security recruitment campaign is given sufficient priority, they may just be saving their business’ reputation, with a cyber threat never too far away.