Cyber criminals targeting small businesses in rural and regional areas

He said small to medium business operators needed to ensure they were protected, with attackers looking for easy targets.

"The days of small business thinking that they are too small for any cyber criminal to be bothered targeting them or ignoring the situation altogether is changing rapidly," Dr Pye said.

"This is largely due to the fact that over the last 20 years, governments, big business and critical infrastructure owners have worked together to harden their cyber defences to build resilience and establish a situation where it is becoming far more challenging for cyber criminals to infiltrate and successfully attack large organisations."

This has led the criminals to find other victims.

"The focus of attackers and scammers is moving towards small businesses as an easier target to perpetrating their crimes," Dr Pye said.

"Small businesses lack the resources of cyber security expertise themselves or financial dollars to access expertise, particularly in rural and regional locations."

Dr Pye said the most common cyber crimes reported by businesses were email compromise, business email compomise fraud and online banking fraud.

He said the average cost of cyber crime to businesses increased by 14 per cent in 2022-23, with small businesses reporting an average cost of $46,000, while larger businesses were paying up to $71,600.

Dr Pye said cyber criminals could steal sensitive customer data, lock down systems and cause reputational damage to a business.

"In essence, a cyber security incident is a single or series of unwanted or unexpected cyber security events that have a significant probability of compromising an organisation's business operations," Dr Pye said.

"Cyber security incidents can impact the confidentiality, integrity or availability of a system and the data that it stores, processes or communications."

Dr Pye said business owners could find out about their options when it came to protecting themselves at the Cyber Safe 24 Great South Coast at the Lighthouse Theatre on Thursday, April 18.

He will be one of four speakers at the event, which will run from 1pm to 4pm.

Tickets cost $15 and can be purchased at eventbrite.