The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has released their Annual Cyber Threat Report 2023-2024.
Key points include:
Australia faces the most complex and challenging strategic environment since the Second World War. These strategic challenges extend to the cyber threat landscape. While advancements in critical and emerging technologies offer significant social and economic benefits, they also improve the capabilities of malicious cyber actors who continue to target Australia's networks.
In FY2023-24, ASD received over 36,700 calls to its Australian Cyber Security Hotline, an increase of 12% from the previous financial year.
ASD also responded to over 1,100 cyber security incidents, highlighting the continued exploitation of Australian systems and ongoing threat to our critical networks.
State-sponsored cyber actors persistently target Australian governments, critical infrastructure and businesses using evolving tradecraft. These actors conduct cyber operations in pursuit of state goals, including for espionage, in exerting malign influence, interference and coercion, and in seeking to pre-position on networks for disruptive cyber-attacks.
Over the past year, ASD co-sealed several joint advisories with international partners to highlight the evolving operations of state-sponsored cyber actors. In February 2024, ASD joined the US and other international partners in releasing an advisory that assessed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is leveraging living off the land techniques that abuse native tools and processes on systems.
The PRC's choice of targets and pattern of behaviour is consistent with pre-positioning for disruptive effects rather than traditional cyber espionage operations.
In FY2023-24, ASD notified entities more than 930 times of potential malicious activity on their networks. A robust partnership between government and industry underpins our ability to effectively defence the nation against malicious cyber activity.
Cyber security is not set-and-forget. Organisations should consider replacing unsupported information and communications technology (ICT) systems with secure-by-design products, consider cyber security when implementing new technologies and follow ASD’s best-practice cyber security advice, such as the Essential Eight.
Regularly updating and applying ICT best practice builds resilience now and into the future.
The full report can be found here
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