Lack of investment in cyber-protection is bringing businesses to their knees

NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, U.K. - April 5, 2019 - PRLog -- The latest Cyber Security Breaches Survey from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport released on 3rd April brought with it come very revealing statistics. 32% of businesses reported a cyber-breach in the past 12 months which cost an average of £4,180 in lost data/assets (this is up a massive 32% from 2018). 80% of companies targeted were victims of phishing attacks and 28% were targeted by impersonation email attacks looking to trick users into transferring money.

This year there are actually fewer companies being targeted but those that are targeted find themselves being subjected to more attacks than ever before (200% more attacks than in 2017). Pete Watson, CEO of Atlas Cloud said, "these statistics show that companies who have invested correctly in cyber-protection are being targeted less and less and those that haven't are putting their business at serious risk as sophisticated cyber-attacks like email impersonation attacks can even put companies out of business in extreme cases."

78% of businesses surveyed claimed that cyber-security was a high priority for their senior management team but only 35% have a board member who has been given cyber-security as an area of responsibility and only 16% of businesses have a formal cyber-security incident management process in place. Commenting on this part of the survey, Pete Watson said, "it looks like a lot of companies are talking the talk about taking cyber-security seriously but they aren't following this up with concrete actions or plans, which leaves them exposed to hackers."

The new GDPR regulations which came into place last May have been a big driver of investment in cyber-security with 7% growth in companies trying to ensure that their customer and employee data is protected from external threats. 30% of businesses surveyed said they have made changes to cyber-security due to GDPR, of which 60% created brand new policies, 15% had given staff extra training and 11% had made changes to firewall/system configurations.

The survey also showed that only 49% had sought external help and expertise from 3rd party security providers, which places a lot of pressure on in-house IT teams to be able to handle all external threats themselves and may be another cause for the rise in cyber-breaches as teams struggle to keep up.

https://www.atlascloud.co.uk/government-cyber-security-breaches-survey-2019-infographic/