Australia’s cyber security research organisation, the Oceania Cyber Security Centre, has called on policy makers, industry and research communities to place a greater emphasis on improving cyber security resilience to protect the national interests of Australia, and its close neighbour states across the Oceania region.

The use of cloud applications has grown extensively over the past 12 months, with Salesforce and Slack increasing by 55% and 44%, respectively, according to new research which also reveals a “significant” gap between the adoption of cloud-based tools and cloud security technologies, increasing the risk of potential data breaches.

Over half (56%) of Australian office workers have had their data compromised as part of a breach or hack, including nearly 3 in 10 (28%) more than once, according to a survey of office workers in Australia, the US, UK and Japan.