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Australia’s cyber threat landscape is escalating fast. The ASD’s Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 reveals a 16% surge in cyber incidents reported to the national hotline and a staggering 219% rise in the average cost of cybercrime to large businesses.
State-sponsored actors from China and Russia continue targeting Australian networks and critical infrastructure, while cybercriminals weaponise stolen data and AI-driven tactics at scale.
The message is clear: Australia’s threat environment is increasing, and the four “big moves” ASD outlines logging, modernising legacy systems, managing third-party risk, and preparing for post-quantum encryption are now priorities, not future projects. Here’s what stood out and how Bastion helps you enable action instead of just reading the memo.
The four “Big Moves”
1. Best-Practice Logging: Seeing the Invisible
The ASD’s take: The Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 highlights that attackers are increasingly “living off the land”, using legitimate administrator tools, remote-management software and system processes to move through networks unnoticed. Traditional defences aren’t failing because they’re weak, but because they’re blind.
Without detailed and centralised logging, organisations have little chance of spotting malicious behaviour hidden among normal activity. The report urges Australian businesses to prioritise robust logging frameworks that capture, correlate and retain the right data, because visibility is now the foundation of defence.
How Bastion helps:
By translating the recommendation into action. We implement and manage next-generation SIEM + SOAR platforms tailored to your environment, ensuring every critical event is captured and analysed in context.
Each client is paired with a dedicated Lead Analyst who knows your baseline and hunts for anomalies 24/7. Instead of relying on after-the-fact alerts, we provide continuous visibility, rapid correlation, and early-stage threat detection, turning your logs from passive records into a proactive defence system.
2. Modernising Legacy Systems: Rebuilding the Foundations
The ASD’s take: The Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 singles out outdated systems as one of the most persistent weaknesses in Australian networks. Many breaches now stem from unpatched servers, unsupported software, or exposed edge devices that were never designed for today’s threat environment.
Attackers actively scan for old versions, weak configurations, and forgotten assets. The ASD calls for organisations to replace, retire, or securely isolate legacy systems to reduce their exploitable surface area and strengthen overall resilience.
How Bastion helps: We start by mapping your digital estate by identifying legacy infrastructure, misconfigurations, and technical debt that create unnecessary risk. From there, we design a modernisation roadmap that balances security uplift with operational continuity.
Whether that means migrating to secure cloud environments, implementing compensating controls, or segmenting vulnerable assets, our team delivers a structured, secure transition.
3. Managing Third-Party Risk: Securing the Supply Chain
The ASD’s take: The Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 stresses that many of Australia’s most damaging breaches originate beyond the organisation’s perimeter through suppliers, partners, or managed service providers. In a hyper-connected ecosystem, your weakest vendor can become your biggest vulnerability.
Compromised credentials, misconfigured integrations, and inherited cloud access have all been exploited by adversaries to pivot into trusted environments. The ASD urges organisations to adopt formal third-party risk management practices, from due diligence and contract controls to continuous security monitoring all to ensure supply chains don’t become back doors for attackers.
How Bastion helps: We turn third-party risk management into a living process, not a checkbox exercise. We perform vendor security assessments aligned to ISO 27001 and NIST SP 800-161, uncovering weak controls and unseen dependencies.
Our governance and compliance specialists embed continuous monitoring to track vendor security posture and alert you to changes in risk exposure. From supplier audits to contractual control reviews, we give you visibility and confidence across every external connection.
4. Preparing for Post-Quantum Cryptography: Getting Ahead of Tomorrow’s Threats
The ASD’s take: The Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 looks beyond today’s ransomware and data-theft headlines to the next seismic shift in cybersecurity: quantum computing. ASD warns that when quantum machines mature, they could rapidly break many of the public-key encryption algorithms that protect sensitive data today.
Even more concerning, adversaries are already conducting “harvest-now, decrypt-later” operations, stealing encrypted data today to unlock it once quantum capabilities arrive.
ASD’s message is unambiguous: organisations must start preparing now. That means knowing where encryption is used, identifying quantum-vulnerable algorithms, and developing transition plans toward post-quantum standards well before they’re mandatory.
How Bastion helps: We help you get quantum-ready before it becomes a crisis. We begin by mapping your cryptographic footprint; where and how your data is encrypted, which algorithms are at risk, and which systems will need updating.
From there, we design a quantum readiness roadmap, guiding you through algorithm selection, implementation planning, and governance integration. Our advisory teams work with CISOs and boards to translate a complex technical challenge into a clear strategic plan.
Emerging Frontlines: Where the Fight Is Already Happening
Beyond the four “big moves,” the Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 highlights several active battlegrounds shaping Australia’s immediate risk landscape. Generative AI is being weaponised to produce convincing phishing emails, deepfake videos, and synthetic voice scams at scale, erasing the traditional tells of a cyber con.
Ransomware remains rampant, with 138 incidents reported this year, and nearly 40% of victims first alerted by the ACSC rather than internal detection. Meanwhile, attacks on critical infrastructure have surged 111%, underscoring that cyber risk has evolved from an IT issue into a national resilience challenge.
How Bastion helps: We bring operational muscle to these emerging threats. We deliver AI-aware phishing simulations and staff awareness programs that mirror modern attack tradecraft. Our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service combines real-time monitoring, incident response, and digital forensics to contain ransomware before it spreads.
For critical infrastructure operators, we conduct OT/SCADA network penetration tests, segmentation reviews, and resilience exercises to harden systems that can’t afford downtime. In short, we help organisations anticipate the next attack vector, not just recover from the last one.
The Annual Cyber Threat Report 2024–25 doesn’t just describe a rising threat landscape; it delivers a blueprint for how Australian organisations can fight back. The message from ASD is clear: visibility, modernisation, supply-chain discipline, and forward planning are no longer optional. Cyber resilience now depends on moving faster than the attackers, not merely reacting to them.
Bastion, we turn those imperatives into execution, combining strategy, technology, and human expertise to build security that works.
Whether it’s transforming how you see your network, modernising what you run, securing who you trust, or preparing for what’s next, we help you go from compliance on paper to confidence in practice. Because in today’s environment, awareness alone won’t save you, action will.
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