A cyber attack hit an Australian user every second in 2024, marking a staggering twelvefold increase from the previous year. This surge contributed to a global cybersecurity crisis, where 5.6 billion accounts were compromised worldwide, equating to 176 breaches per second, according to Surfshark.
The global total represents a nearly eightfold surge from 2023 when only 23 accounts were compromised per second.
Australia’s data breach epidemic
Australia recorded 47 million data breaches last year, up from 2023’s 4.1 million, making it the eleventh most affected country worldwide, according to Surfshark. On a per capita basis, 1,785 Australian accounts were breached per 1,000 residents, far exceeding New Zealand’s 779 per 1,000.
Surfshark, a cybersecurity firm, analysed attack data from 29,000 publicly available databases to put together its 2024 data breach recap.
SEE: Phishing Emails in Australia Rise by 30%
“On a global scale, 285 accounts are breached per 100 people on average,” Emilija Kucinskaite, senior researcher at Surfshark, said in a press release. “However, in Australia, this number goes up to 732 per 100 people. Statistically speaking, an average Australian has been affected by data breaches around 7 times.”
A total of 554.5 million personal records belonging to Australians have been exposed since 2004, consisting of email addresses, passwords, phone numbers, credit card details, IP address, and other sensitive information. On average, each email address was breached with three additional pieces of sensitive data.
Indeed, over the last decade, 192.5 million Australian user accounts across different platforms have been compromised, and 106.9 million of these were accompanied with passwords. This put 56% of breached users in danger of account takeover, Surfshark found, potentially resulting in identity theft, extortion, and other cyber crimes. The exposed user accounts also consisted of 49 million unique Australian email addresses.
A costly and growing threat
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach in Australia reached a record high of AUD $4.26 million (USD $2.77 million), representing a 27% increase since 2020. This rise is attributed to:
- More phishing attacks
- Longer breach detection times
- Increasing cybersecurity skills shortages
- The growing sophistication of cyber threats
Furthermore, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner found that the number of notifiable data breaches in the first six months of 2024 (527) was 9% higher than the same period in 2023 and marked the largest number since 2020.
Major cyber attacks that hit Australia
Several high-profile breaches contributed to record-breaking figures. In April, MediSecure, an electronic prescriptions provider, suffered a ransomware attack compromising the personal and health data of approximately 12.9 million Australians.
SEE: National Public Data Breach: 134 Million Unique Emails Leaked
February saw 122 million individuals affected by a data leak at B2B demand generation company DemandScience, which, according to Surfshark, included 1.2 million Australians. Then, in May, IT provider Outabox suffered a breach affecting about one million patrons of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory clubs.
The world’s largest compilation of passwords to be leaked online was also discovered last year, containing 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext entries. The credentials were discovered in a file named “rockyou2024.txt” that was posted on a popular hacking forum on July 4, 2024.
Cybersecurity in 2024: a growing battlefield
The rising threat of cyber attacks is not an Australia-specific problem, with the barrier to entry for hackers being lowered by the accessibility of AI.
The top five countries for breach volume, from highest to lowest, are China, Russia, the U.S., France, and Germany. The top three accounted for 46% of the world’s data breaches.
Experts warn that without significant action, exposure to cyber risks will only intensify in 2025.
