Ransomware attacks are becoming more sophisticated and they're growing in number - there were 64 cases reported to government agency CERT last year.
Over half of reported cases to CERT were at the end of the year when Mercury IT - a service provider for some big government departments including Justice and Health - was attacked.
Data stolen in that event has been found on the dark web. Late last year the Australian government said it was considering whether new laws were needed to stop ransom payments being made to hackers, in the wake of a massive breach of customer data from medical insurer Medibank and telco Optus.
Kathryn speaks with Dr Jeffrey Foster, an associate professor in Cyber Security Studies at Sydney's Macquarie University - who says there's pros and cons to a ban on ransom payments - and that perhaps a better option would be to ban insurance payments to companies hit by these attacks.
She also talks to Jordan Heersping, threat and incident response manager for CERT about the rise of such attacks in New Zealand.
Photo: AFP
