51% of Asia Pacific small to medium-sized businesses that were hit with a cyber incident in the past year saw the cost of that incident exceed$500,000, according to a survey conducted by Cisco.

Sampling 3,750 businesses employing between 10 and 999 employees in 14 countries around the region, Cisco said 83% reported an incident in excess of$100,000, and 13% had an incident cost more than$1 million. The survey was conducted between April and July.

In Australia, where 306 qualifying businesses responded, the numbers were more stark, with 64% reporting an incident costing over$500,000, and 33% saying they were hit more than$1 million in cost.

For businesses that ran simulation exercises, Cisco said 85% of respondents found issues in their defences.

"Of those that identified weaknesses, 95% said the exercises revealed issues with not having the right technology solutions in place to detect a cyber attack or threat. The same number found they had too many technologies and struggled to integrate them together, while 96% discovered they did not have the right technology solutions to block an attack," the company said.

The main vector that attacked the sampled businesses was malware, which was used 85% of the time and led to 75% of attacks getting customer information, 62% finding internal emails, and 61% of attacks hitting employee data, intellectual property, or financial data.

In its 2020-21 annual report released earlier this week, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) said it has seen a 15% increase in ransomware attacks over the past year.

"ASD responded to more than 1,630 cybersecurity incidents during 2020