Finally, in Victoria, there has been some easing of the restrictions as all Victorians have rallied together to work very hard to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus with the daily number of COVID-19 cases dropping substantially after a very long period in lockdown. There are also ‘green shoots’ appearing in that a vaccine may be available in early 2021. The opening up of Victoria will enable freer movement around the state, see borders progressively reopen to other states and ultimately see the level of business activity pick up. Businesses both big and small, will be working hard over the coming months to reopen their doors and to reposition themselves in the new environment to take advantage of the recovery.
Nexia Melbourne sees many opportunities to work with our clients during this process. We will be delighted to hear from you if we can be of assistance as part of this all important rebuilding phase. We are certainly uniquely positioned in Victoria at the moment, after successfully containing the second wave of the virus enabling us to begin thinking about the future with some degree of optimism. However, we cannot be complacent as the rest of the world particularly Europe and the US now has to deal with the second and third waves of the pandemic. However, we can be assured that if we all work together and stick to the rules, we should see a much rosier picture emerge heading into the warm summer months and into 2021.
Sometimes, tough times can bring good fortune, if you stay focussed on working closely with and delivering on your client needs. At Nexia Melbourne, we really appreciated your support over this unprecedented period and our success is your success. We have been fortunate indeed, as a mid tier accounting firm, to be well positioned to see growth in our business during the COVID-19 period. We assisted clients position their businesses through management consulting advice as well as the usual support. In an article appearing in the Australian Financial Review (“AFR”) on 17TH November, Nexia Australia received coverage reporting on revenue jumping 13 per cent in the last financial year, growth that was above the average growth of other similar firms and we are very proud of this achievement- Thank-you. It was evident during this period that many of our clients reached out to us when help was needed and this created a lot of activity for many parts of our business. Most importantly, people really matter to us and we ensured our employees were not impacted in any way allowing them to deal seamlessly with the challenges of working remotely and we appreciate their dedication to our business and to our client’s needs.
Whilst it is always good to celebrate success, it is certainly not a time to be complacent as the current environment has seen a spike in cyber incidents in Australia. Businesses need to be vigilant at all times in the digital age which brings with it a whole new set of potential business threats. On this front, there has been some recent media commentary about the increase in Ransomware attacks and that, according to the AFR on 18th November, ‘they have become a million–dollar menace for Aussie firms’.
In our case, Nexia Melbourne recently found itself in a position where it needed to immediately act as a cyber attacker had allegedly hacked into the company’s server and had claimed that files had been accessed and would be downloaded unless a significant ransom was paid.
Fortunately, our team was in a position to act quickly to rectify this situation with Nexia’s IT Department and its external IT partner ensuring a robust IT infrastructure was already in place with appropriate business policies and processes to be able to swiftly deal with these types of threats. Over the past few years, the firm has made major improvements to the IT infrastructure enabling it to defend such attacks.
From a business and client perspective, all the appropriate IT protocols were in place and the firewalls and anti-virus protection mechanisms were activated to immediately deal with this sort of business threat & protect all stakeholder files and privacy. As a result, no data was taken.
Most of our clients might not be aware that Ransomware is the number one malware attack affecting organisations today. It encrypts the files and holds them hostage until a ransom is paid, potentially causing massive disruption to your business. Attacks have been increasing steadily over recent years and can be triggered by simply opening a genuine-looking email, or a download from a website. The different types of Ransomware then lock the data and demand exorbitant payments for the promise of its release.
Some tips to consider in avoiding a cyber incident:
- Use hard to guess passwords and keep them confidential
- Use different passwords for different accounts
- Don’t leave sensitive information lying around
- Don’t post any private or sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, passwords or other private information
- Pay attention to phishing traps in email and watch for the telltale signs of a scam
- Don’t click on links from an unknown or unreliable source
- Don’t be tricked into giving away confidential information
As Managing Partner, I am conscious that this type of threat is certainly a business-critical and ever present danger which can be triggered quite innocently in any organisation. In our case, what we did was to ensure that we had documented protocols, the capacity and appropriate protections in place to prevent something like this escalating and causing significant harm to our business. The confidentiality of our data and the protection of our client information are of paramount importance to us at all times.
I feel overall that we can now look to the future with some degree of optimism and we can certainly expect to see more ‘green shoots’ appearing in the months ahead and into 2021 as businesses begin to rebuild and restore their respective positions.
