Security analysts are warning there are growing signs that supporters of the Islamic State group will focus on attacking soft targets in Southeast Asia and Australia.
The threat comes as Australia's Justice Minister Michael Keenan begins a tour of Malaysia and Thailand to call for a greater coordinated response to IS.
Steve Vickers, chief executive officer of a Hong Kong-based consultancy specialising in political and corporate risk, says Australia has already proven it's vulnerable with the 2014 attack on the Lindt Cafe in Sydney.
"What we're actually looking at, sadly, as the year advances, is the sort of attacks that will become prevalent will be the soft targets in public areas," Vickers told AAP.
He said the January 14 attack in Jakarta that left eight people dead, including the four attackers, and more than 20 wounded, has raised further concerns of similar events in the future.
"There will be some notional attachment to foreigners, so they pick Starbucks in Jakarta [or] it could be a bank with an American name or whatever in Sydney," he said.
In a published report, Vickers warned that Australian shopping malls could be potential soft targets.
"We are in for moving toward softer targets on a far less coordinated basis than before," he added.
Australian Neil Fergus of Sydney-based Intelligent Risks Pty Ltd says Australian businesses in Asia need to be more aware of their operations "especially in major cities".
Fergus said a chief concern was if businesses were "in a high-rise in the middle of a central business district in Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur or even Bangkok".
Fergus told a business seminar there were about 250 Australians known to be in the Middle East and linked to IS out of an estimated 20,000 foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq.
He said the number of foreign fighters from Southeast Asia "still lack the clarity that intelligence agencies would like with the exception of Malaysia".
The outlook comes as Mr Keenan, in his role assisting the prime minister with counter-terrorism efforts, is set to hold talks with Thai and Malaysian officials over regional security in the coming days.
The minister said in a statement that Australia was "concerned about the growing influence of [the Islamic State group] in the Southeast Asian region", and was working with regional allies to deliver a coordinated response to the transnational threat.
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