CYBER SECURITY CERTIFICATION A VALUABLE INVESTMENT By Tony Vizza, CISSP, CCSP
WHY CYBER SECURITY IS CRITICAL TO ELECTRONIC SECURITY The advent of digitization has seen the electronic security world changing dramatically over the last 20 years. Almost all electronic security devices today are reliant on network connectivity in order to operate and keep organizations physically secure. While the electronic security devices perform their objectives in keeping physical security threats in check, the connected nature of these devices opens up a new set of threats from a cyber perspective. This boom in digital security devices has correlated to better overall physical security. Sadly, the same cannot be said for cyber security. While the Australian Bureau of Statistics has recorded a significant drop in property crime such as burglaries over the last few decade1, the rate of cyber related data breaches has increased at an
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exponential rate. For the twelve months to the 31st March 2019, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) received 964 breach notifications from Australian organisations.2 This was an incredible 712% increase on the previous twelve-month period. The OAIC findings revealed that 40% of breaches were attributed solely to human error or system faults, while the remaining 60% of breaches were due to a malicious actor.3 Many of these breaches are caused by misconfiguration of IT services, lack of preventative measures and lack of user education and awareness.4 Globally, the World Economic Forum has declared that cyberrelated risks now constitute two of the top five global risks.5 As a result, the Federal Government has decided to review its cyber security strategy for Australian organisations and individuals for the year 2020.6
