"When you look at the US and Europe, where they have data breach notification laws in place, a lot more of the investment has gone into preventing a breach from happening in the first place."

As a result, Kopelke sees that contributing to the post-breach being "a lot lower on average," as they're happing "a lot less as well."

"That really does highlight that there's still a very strong and compelling reason why Australia should consider fast tracking legislation around areas of data breach notification," he said.

Another key discovery in the report was that malicious or criminal attacks were the most common cause of data breaches in Australia.

According to Kopelke, the result does not surprise Symantec and the vendor foresees an increase in these types of attacks for the future.