Brett Cowell from Cowell Clarke Commercial Lawyers spoke on day one of LiftEx Regional on cyber security.
Brett Cowell is a founding partner and Director of Cowell Clarke Commercial Lawyers and has built a career on enabling people to operate at their best and his senior management of the firm has allowed him to bring real world experience to advising clients on corporate and business management.
Recognised as both strategic and practical with a focus on commercial outcomes, Brett provides leadership and advice within the Corporate and Commercial Transactions teams.
He advises clients particularly in the digital and technology, defence and advanced manufacturing sectors on a national and international scale.
Brett spoke on day one of LiftEx Regional to LEEA Regional Manager Justin Boehm on cyber security for businesses.
Justin started off the discussion by stating: “IT gurus talk in another language, most of which we don’t all understand, but we have a responsibility to protect our businesses,” he said.
Brett went on to elaborate on Justin’s point.
“We can’t afford to make it someone else’s problem, we are starting to see actions taken now against senior management,” he said.
“We don’t have to be cyber security experts, we do have to have awareness of it though, if you have to go through an attack it is extremely difficult,” Brett said.
He discussed the responsibility of companies to protect private data of customers.
“Under the privacy act, if you are collecting personal information about your customers if that gets taken unlawfully and it has a risk it could do the person harm, you have a mandatory requirement to report the date breach,” Brett said.
“The privacy act will be changing in the near future, so small businesses will have even more responsibility moving forward,” he said.
Brett discussed what a ransomware attack can look like as well as what a data breach can take.
“If it is a ransomware attack it closes your system down and that is catastrophic, basically, it means you cannot turn a computer on and your business will grind to a halt,” he said
“A lot of attacks are people stealing information, you will have information about your customers and what sort of use will that be for a dangerous actor, the possibilities are endless.
“There has been a 38 per cent increase in cyber attacks in the last 12 months,” he said.
“The risk as well is if you are a part of a big company’s system, such as BHP for example, if they learn that you are the reason they were hacked, you can imagine what that will do for the relationship,” Brett said.
Brett went on to finish the conversation by explaining what businesses can do to better protect themselves.
“If your software suppliers are sending you updates for your systems, you need to update your system straight away, often it is an update in response to a new danger,” Brett said.
“Training your people is pivotal, working remotely is posing more risks, people will use the same computer they do for work to go onto a dodgy website, an important mitigation strategy for cyber protection is having good staff who are well trained,” Brett concluded.
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