CYBERATTACKS ARE INCREASING
It will come as no surprise to learn that cybercrime is on the rise. What might surprise you is that it impacts every business of every size in every sector. There is a common belief that hackers don’t bother with small businesses. Actually, 43% of attacks are aimed at small businesses!
The reason – large companies are heavily defended while smaller companies typically have little or no defence. It is much easier to steal valuable information from small and medium sized companies.
A recent report from Hiscox suggests that we are becoming better equipped to deal with the attacks. However, the losses associated with the attacks are still rising. Cyber losses have risen nearly six-fold worldwide in the last 12 months alone.
IMPACT ON THE UK
The report highlights regional difference and some of the largest losses were seen in the UK. One UK financial services firm had total losses of $87.9 million.
The largest loss from a single cyber event was also in the UK. This cost the professional services company in question an eyewatering $15.8 million.
SECTORS HARDEST HIT
Source: Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020While financial services remains high for obvious reasons, it has been overtaken by the energy industry with manufacturing not far behind.
The Hiscox view is that:
“We have seen a shift in the hackers’ behaviour in the last six to 12 months as they focus their efforts more on industries such as Energy and Manufacturing. We believe there are three reasons for this. Firstly, reliance on automation (i.e. managed by computers). Secondly low maturity in cyber resilience (e.g. poor back-ups, limited disaster recovery planning or testing). Finally, low tolerance to what is often a high-impact outage. This offers rich pickings for ransomware attacks.”
The rise in energy attacks is partly about well-funded groups looking to gain control of a country’s energy supply including nuclear reactors.
It is also due to the increase in the number of small energy suppliers who have little cybersecurity and hold financial information about their customers. These present easy picking for hackers looking to de-fraud large numbers of people.
Cyberattacks on manufacturing are also on the rise. Small and medium sized manufacturers in large manufacturing supply chains are often poorly defended. Large manufacturers often have to share sensitive with their smaller suppliers. This is becoming increasingly necessary with the move towards digitisation and automation to improve productivity and efficiencies.
Hackers are turning towards these smaller suppliers to steal the information they want.
SECTORS HARDEST HIT
Hiscox’s report ranks the different sectors of UK firms by the cyber security threats they are facing, revealing how ready each industry is to defend against cyber threats. It looks at the number and cost of cyber events alongside the strength of various cyber protections.
Source: Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020These scores are across the industry. Smaller businesses need to note that their risk score is likely to be much higher for them as they do not have same level of cybersecurity in place as lager companies.
NO COMPANY OR ORGANISATION IS SAFE
However, just because your industry is not on this list does not make you safe. The cyber threat landscape is evolving at an alarming pace and now more than ever it is a case of when you will be subject to an attack rather than if.
Many businesses are put off from taking action due to the expense. This is easy to understand with many cybersecurity companies charging minimally thousands if not tens of thousands of pounds.
Cyber Risk Score is the affordable cybersecurity solution. It has been specifically designed to meet the needs of small and medium sized businesses. It gives you an easily understood score out of 1,000 along with a list of recommendations to improve your score.
You are invited to register your account today.
The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020. https://www.hiscox.co.uk/cyberreadiness