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 sophis