Traditionally Christmas and the New Year period sees an uptick in phishing emails, particularly shopping and shipping scams. Phishing emails account for close to 90% of all successful cyber attacks we see in pharmacies. Often this results in a ransomware attack where your data and/or PCs are encrypted, and a ransom demanded to unlock your valuable data. Such an interruption at this time of the year would be disastrous.

The recent Optus data breach has thrust cyber security back into the national spotlight, with the impact devasting for both Optus and their customers. Even a few weeks on it is far from over, and the consequences are likely to see Australian laws surrounding a data breach strengthened and fines increased.

Yet whilst the scale of this breach was unprecedented, it was only one amongst many, with breaches since involving MyDeal (Woolworths), Medibank and Costa Group. Further the NAB have reported receiving over 50 million attacks each month!