Penetration Testing (or pen testing) sees an organisation hire a cyber security expert to ‘hack’ the system. This ethical hacking allows the cyber security expert to undertake simulated attacks to find and exploit vulnerabilities within the system they are employed to test. Once the weak spots in a system’s defences are identified they are highlighted to the organisation and remediations are recommended to ensure these vulnerabilities no longer exist.

Allianz Australia Risk Barometer for 2022 found Business Interruption and Cyber Incidents as the joint number one risk with 41% of the total responses each. While the top Asia Pacific region and more broadly, Global risk was Cyber Incidents with 40% of all responses advising this was their number one area of concern. Business Interruption was a close second with 37% of the responses.

Respondents are more worried about Cyber Incidents than any of the other top 10 risks including natural catastrophes, tariffs, pandemic outbreaks, and inflation. In the same vein, Dark Reading outlined that cyber-attacks were up more than 50% per week in 2021 when compared to the weekly average in previous years. And there is no sign of slowing down as people continue to work remotely and organisations are rapidly integrating new technologies into their organisational stack to ensure staff remain connected and the business maintains the required levels of operational efficiencies.