British Businesses Must Do More To Protect Themselves

Uploaded on 2024-04-22 in NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Cyber attacks are increasing, but businesses aren’t helping themselves as half of those in Britain suffered a cyber attack or security breach in the last 12 months . Indeed, the situation is so bad that the UK Government’s Cyber Security Report 2023, has been criticised for not highlighting how small businesses are failing to respond to the risks of cyber attacks.

The annual Cyber Security Breaches Survey is a research study for UK cyber resilience, aligning with the the National Cyber Strategy. It is primarily used to inform government policy on cyber security, making the UK cyberspace a secure place to do business.

The study explores the policies, processes and approach to cyber security, for businesses, charities and educational institutions. It also considers the different cyber attacks and cyber crimes these organisations face, as well as how these organisations are impacted and respond,” says the Report.

Dealing With Breaches & Attacks

The Report explores how well businesses and charities deal with breaches or attacks, including identification, response, reporting and adaptation to prevent future cases. In the survey, questions on this topic were framed in terms of the most disruptive breach or attack an organisation had faced in the last 12 months.

The results of reported in a key section of the report is based on ony the 50% of business and 32% of charities that identified breaches or attacks rather than the full sample, consequently, the sector and subgroup anaylsis is unliklely to present a full picture.

Even so, the survey results seem to demonstrate just how poorly British businesses - especially small businesses - are responding to the challenge of preventing, detecting or responding to data breaches

One section of the survey focuses on how businesses respond to incidents, finding that only a few businesses report a breachand that more than a third (39%) said that no action was taken in response to their most disruptive breach in the last 12 months.

Commenting on these finding Andy Kays, CEO of cyber security firm Socura, who deliver managed services to some of the UK’s biggest brands and several NHS trusts, “It is incredibly disappointing to see such disregard for cyber security among the UK’s small business community. Despite years of warnings from experts, countless data breach headlines, and increased regulatory action, this issue still isn’t on their radar... Only a fraction of UK businesses have any kind of formalised incident response plan.. Businesses will always have a plan in case of a fire, but will not apply the same due care for a data breach, which is statistically much more likely."

According to Kays, most businesses’ experience with cyber incidents is limited to phishing attempts, and their default response is to conduct security awareness training if they do anything at all.

“In the event of a breach, businesses are not keeping records, not informing the police or regulators, not assessing the scale and impact of the incident. They are failing to do the bare minimum. It’s also important to note that businesses are doing very little to prevent or detect breaches in the first place." Kays says.

Furthemore, the estimated financial cost of a data breachof just over £1,200 per incident seems low compared to other sources. “We know that large enterprise businesses can lose millions in the event of a data breach due to the disruption, reputational impact and share price drop. The ICO can also impose serious fines to businesses that fall foul of GDPR.” Kays said.

UK Government | Socura | Tech Radar

Image: Ideogram

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