These days, see a call from an unknown number and you typically just let it go to voice mail. If it’s important, the caller will leave a message, right? With text messages though, while you may feel confident that you can spot a pesky road toll text scam from a very long distance, phishing scams by text are becoming ever more sophisticated and trickier to identify.

Last year, two high-profile data breaches impacting Optus and Medibank affected millions of Australians and resulted in regulatory measures around Australia’s privacy laws being tightened with penalties for breaches hiked considerably.

With data security breaches in the news, it’s a reminder that mobile data security is always evolving, and no protection is ever foolproof. Use it as your wake-up call to strengthen your mobile data security posture as we start the New Year.

As we enter the silly season and our minds turn to the end-of-year break, you can count on cybercriminals to ramp up their malicious cyber activity. According to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), the organisation spearheading the Australian Government’s efforts to improve cyber security, the number and sophistication of cyberthreats in Australia is growing. There is now a ransomware report every 7 minutes, amounting to more than 76,000 cybercrime reports over the year.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) has named the overarching theme for 2022 as ‘Have you been hacked?’. Cyber security is important for every business and individual. The ACSC highlights the first steps as turning on automatic software updates, regularly backing up your devices, switching on multi-factor authentication, using passphrases, securing mobile devices, and watching out for cyber scams.