Of 364 incident reports in its first quarter, CERT NZ referrred 70 to the Police.
New Zealand CERT, or Computer Emergency Response Team, has received 364 reports of cyber security incidents in its first quarter of operations, referring 70 of these to the Police.
Since launch on 11 April, CERT has seen 96 phishing incidents reported or 34 per cent of the total reports.
Phishing consists of messages designed to trick users into giving up information, credentials, or money.
"New Zealanders have suffered financial losses totalling more than $700,000 due to cyber security incidents in the last three months alone, according to the reports we have received," CERT NZ said in its report.
Only 28 per cent of those reporting incidents reported their direct financial losses. These totalled $730,000.
The most common category (8 per cent) were losses of data, followed by operational losses (7 per cent) and financial losses (5 per cent).
The international ransomware attack WannaCry led to a spike in reports of ransomware attacks in mid-May but WannaCry accounted for only six of the 364 reports received. Twelve other ransomeware attacks were reported around the same time.
In addition to cases referrred to the Police, CERT NZ responded to 286 directly and referred eight more to Netsafe.
Reports of malware were 17 per cent of the total, followed by unauthorised access at 15 per cent and scams and fraud at 13 per cent. Ransomware followed on 12 per cent.
The full report is available here.
