Cyber attacks that occurred this year and how you can protect your data
More than 500 data breaches were reported in Australia over the first half of 2025 alone, but there are some ways you can minimise your risk of being caught up in one.
It's been a big year of cyber attacks, with millions of Australians losing personal data to tech savvy criminals.
No industry was immune, with the finance sector, health service providers, and the Australian government seeing the most attacks in the first half of this year — costing people their private information and, in some cases, hard earned savings.
There were huge hits to businesses too, with each data breach potentially costing a company millions of dollars.
Last month, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) launched a new Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) statistics dashboard to keep the public informed on the volume and type of data breaches occurring.
From January to June this year, 532 data breaches were recorded, with more than half caused by a "malicious or criminal attack".
While we don't yet have the final data for the second half of the year, it only seems to have worsened, with an OAIC spokesperson telling the ABC more notifications have been "received in the second half of the calendar year".
But Vanessa Teague, an associate professor at the ANU College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics, said the biggest breach of the year might be one we don't even know about.
Vanessa Teague says cyber attacks are constantly improving. (Supplied: Vanessa Teague )
"The most effective attacks are surreptitious … there's no particular reason an intrusion would be noticed. Even if it is noticed by the service provider, the affected people may not be notified," she said.
So what can one do to protect their data, and ensure they give themselves the best chance at avoiding a breach? The experts explain.
No ransom payments
When the Qantas cyber breach happened earlier this year, affecting 5.7 million customers, a hacking group at the centre of the attack threatened to release personal data to the dark web if a ransom wasn't paid.
Vanessa Teague says companies should not pay ransoms to hackers as it only incentivises them to steal again. (Pexels)
The ABC doesn't believe a ransom was paid in this case, as Qantas announced it worked with police on the matter, and Dr Teague said companies shouldn't be paying ransoms because they only incentivise the criminals to act again.