Nearly three-quarters of Australian businesses suffered a major cybersecurity incident in the past year and two-thirds experienced at least one AI-related threat, research by cybersecurity company ESET shows.

The Enterprise Cybersecurity Report also says one-third of Australian companies suffered from employee misuse of generative AI, and the same proportion experienced data leakage through AI platforms.

The paper also points to growing interest in external security services and cyber insurance. Managed detection and response services are being used or considered by 69% of organisations.

About 48% already have cyber insurance, and a further 33% plan to obtain cover. However, 95% report difficulties obtaining or maintaining it, with rising premiums the most cited obstacle (47%), followed by stricter insurer security requirements and limited internal budgets (42% each).

The survey of 400 cybersecurity leaders found that of the 72% of organisations that experienced a major cybersecurity incident in the past year, 35% had three or more.

AI-generated phishing or impersonation attacks affected 30%, and 29% reported deepfake or voice cloning attacks.

Despite the growing exposure, 11% of organisations have no safeguards in place or planned to address AI-related risks. The most common measures are monitoring access to AI tools and their outputs (49%), internal responsible use guidelines (48%) and restrictions on uploading sensitive data to AI platforms (47%).

About 92% of businesses are using or piloting AI across at least one business function, ESET found.

The research also identifies challenges detecting and containing conventional cyber incidents. Cloud environment breaches and business email compromise are the most reported incident types.

ESET says 14% of businesses affected by cyber incidents report significant financial losses.

About 80% of affected businesses detected and responded to their most recent significant incident within 24 hours, but delayed detection remains the leading containment challenge, cited by 53%.

Limited internal resources (40%), co-ordination between teams (38%) and poor visibility across technology environments (36%) are also issues.

Weak, stolen or compromised passwords are the most common causes of incidents, at 37%, followed by phishing or social engineering and human error, both at 34%.

Although 92% of organisations provide cybersecurity training at least annually, employee awareness remains the leading security challenge, cited by half of respondents.