Is your Business Cyber Security Savvy?

Cyber-crime is frequently in the news these days. In March a US dental care company realised it was subject to 10 days of intrusion by cyber criminals who extracted almost 9 million patient’s data.

Closer to home, a security researcher discovered that outsourcing contractor Capita was to have left 655GB of data unprotected and publicly available since 2016 at an easily accessible web address. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage bucket exposed Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and even text files containing login details.

This wasn’t the only embarrassing data breach at the firm, which has £6.5 billion in UK government contracts. Since the discovery, several councils in England have come forward to demand an inquiry into how the financial service contractor had allowed residents’ personal data exposed in the unsecured bucket. As many as 90 organisations have since reported the outsourcing giant to the privacy watchdog, The Information Commissioners Office (ICO).There was also a cyber incident in late March where cyber criminals accessed the company’s systems and have been reportedly selling sensitive details such as bank account information, addresses, and passport photos, presumably on the dark web.

Cybercrime Costs to the UK Economy

As well as the dilemma of the data leaks themselves, the damage to the reputation of firms that are breached, and the loss of business caused by firms that will no longer work with them, the bottom line is that there is an overall cost to the UK economy caused by cybercrime.

The UK Government’s own figures suggest that the average estimated cost of a cyber-attack in 2022 was £4,200. Taking out small businesses, the cost to medium and large businesses rose to £19,400.

Whilst 39% of UK firms realised they were subject to a cyber-attack last year, Independent surveys suggest this could be as high as 80% and with a cost to the UK economy of as much as £27 billion annually.

The fact is that quite often cybercrime goes undetected and unreported. Whichever figure is most accurate, no business should be expected to put up with crime nor lose money to the criminals.

Steps to Cyber Security

Pinfield’s IT offers cyber security services to Small/Medium sized businesses in the West Midlands and beyond. With a comprehensive approach to risk management, staff training, and data security, we are on-hand to help firms guard against vulnerabilities.

Covering every aspect of cyber security from architecture and configuration to identity and access management, we provide supply chain security, logging, and monitoring, in the full spectrum of protecting your business against cyber threats.

We also assist in ensuring firms are compliant with cyber essentials certification requirements, so speak with us about educating your team, and securing your integrity