Only 23% of businesses in Australia and New Zealand have complete knowledge of where their data is stored and 64% have suffered some form of  breach, according to a report  from Thales, a French technology group.

Of the 64%  that experienced breaches, about 47%  say the incidents happened in the last year.

Slightly more than half  of the 152 businesses surveyed for the report  say they have seen  an increase in the volume, severity, and/or scope of cyber-attacks in the past 12 months.

Most  organisations  also admit  they are concerned about the security risks and threats of employees working remotely.

Thales  says the findings show the threat landscape is constantly evolving, with businesses in the region increasingly seeing a rise in attacks.

Malware and ransomware are the most common malicious software used by digital perpetrators to  hack into organisations.

Around 51%  have failed a compliance audit in the last 12 months.

“The increased reliance on multi-cloud environments and the growing number of cyber threats is making security  more challenging,” Brian Grant, Thales Australia and New Zealand Director for Cloud Protection and Licensing Activities, said.

“It is concerning that a large number of  organisations  still don’t know where all their data is stored or are failing compliance audits, in particular as those are just the first step to achieving effective cyber protection.”

The Australia and New Zealand findings are part of Thales’s 2021 Data Threat Report, which takes a look at the global  IT security landscape.  A spokesman for Thales says  insurers were  included as part of the “professional and business services” respondents.

About 2600  executives with responsibility for or influence over IT and data security from 16 economies were surveyed in February for the report.

Thales says  the  pandemic  has  cast a long shadow over the security  landscape,  most visibly in its impact on remote working  arrangements and hastening cloud migrations.

Fewer than half of respondents globally say their security infrastructure is not prepared to handle pandemic-induced risks.

“The pandemic created a huge push to implement  remote work policies, but that shift to remote  work created problems for security teams,” Thales said.

“One of the overarching  takeaways that was driven by lessons learned  from the pandemic is that security strategists need  to increase the agility of their security controls.

“Infrastructure will become more hybrid, and security  teams must have the capabilities to address this more  complex environment efficiently.”

Click here to access the report.