What can businesses do to protect themselves against cyber attacks?
Ed Hardie
2nd May 2022
It's not going to be news to you that remote working is on the rise. In fact, 89% of UK businesses expect hybrid working trends to stay following a 190% increase in remote working since March 2020. (source)
Alongside the increase in remote working, it is no co-incidence we have also seen a vast increase in cyber attacks as cyber criminals look to take advantage of employees working from home outside the relative “cyber safety” of the office.
The statistics from 2021 show that hackers welcomed that shift to home working and took advantage of the vulnerabilities and gaps in security by businesses and according to (Cyber Security Intelligence) cyber attacks were up a massive 50% in 2021 compared to 2020 and increased as high as 71% in specific areas such as healthcare.
Perhaps most alarming of all though is that it appears to be small and medium sized businesses that are receiving more and more attacks - according to Forbes, 43% of cyber attacks in 2021 were aimed at small businesses and of those small businesses only 14% (yes, 14%!) were able to defend against them successfully. (source)
If I haven’t ruined your morning coffee already then, I’m afraid this might; 61% of all small and medium businesses have reported at least one cyber attack during the previous year.
So, what’s the solution to an increase in cyber attacks?
With 43% of small and medium businesses not having a cyber security plan in place, the first step is to ensure you have an effective cyber defence strategy.
With 52% of small and medium businesses not having cyber security IT experts in house, the next step is to identify an effective partner to outsource that work.
Fortunately, there are loads of really good IT and cyber security companies out there with genuine experts on hand to assist (though it pains me to say it!). However, there are also many poor ones too, so it's important to select a partner that values your cyber security as much as you do and most importantly is investing in multiple layers of defence to mitigate risk.
Let’s face it, we all just want IT to work and make our life easier so why not let the experts help and free up your time? You’ll be able to work on new and exciting innovations for your business with the peace of mind that your IT is in the hands of experts.
At Impelling, we offer free IT health checks to review your current set up which I would encourage you to look at doing. There is no obligation to proceed with any of the suggestions we make, and you could even simply take that health check to your current IT provider to ensure you are mitigating potential risk.