Cyber attacks and breaches impact businesses of all sizes and sectors. You may want to brace your business for an attack in the future!

More than half of all UK businesses have suffered a cyber attack over the past 12 months according to a new government study. There is a growing threat of corporate cyber criminals and you should have cyber safety at the fore of protecting assets, financial information, your customer’s privacy and your businesses no matter how small.

The most common mode of attack was fraudulent emails asking staff to reveal passwords or sensitive financial information. This includes prompting staff to open attachments that bring viruses and malware on to the user’s computers. The worrying thing is that the emails have become so sophisticated making it difficult to spot if they are a clear virus or phishing emails. Often emails appear to be from a person within the company attaching a document that entices the recipient to open them. Particular organisations which require documents to be created, circulated and distributed will find this a challenge to deal with. With the ever-increasing prevalence of remote working, this also creates an extra layer of security necessary to consider by all types of business.

A study commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, surveyed more than 1,500 businesses and around 46 per cent identified at least one cyber security breach in the last year, a figure that rose to two-thirds among large and medium-sized companies.

The government have promised to spend £1.9bn on cyber security and announced a new National Cyber Security Centre that will work with GCHQ to boost cyber security in the private sector. The UK will also adopt new European data-protection regulations that are due to come into force in 2018. The new rules will be tougher and can result in fines of up to 4 per cent of a company’s annual turnover for failing to report cyber breaches.

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Author: Yvonne Morris

Email: yvonne@cloudlegalsupport.com

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