Close to half of UK brands fell victim to cyber crime in the past 12 months and that figure is certain to rise substantially over the following 12 months as hackers become ever more sinister in their attempts to gain access to your most precious information.
If ever there was a time to prioritise the use of IT technical support for London businesses, now most certainly is it, given new government figures showing that in the last 12 months alone 40 percent of companies around the UK have experienced a cyber security breach or attack. Having a strong firewall in place such as Cisco Meraki or pfSense will go long way to protecting your information from external attack.
Because cyber threats are constantly evolving as hackers attempt to find new and innovative ways to take down brands and gain access to their networks and systems, one of the best defences for the future is to ensure that staff are aware of the different ways attacks can take place and what to do to spot them.
There is no substitute for training employees to identify possible threats and online training solutions such as Knowbe4 are one such tool we recommend implementing.
The government has just announced that the UK is now positioning itself as a world leader in the race to eradicate some of the most dangerous cyber security threats facing companies today, while also offering consumers better protection in this regard as well.
Up to £70 million in government investment made through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund will be used to increase security and protections built into the digital devices and connected services that we use each and every day.
Research will also be supported into the design and development of hardware that will be more secure and resilient from the outset. The intention is to design out forms of cyber threats by designing in security and protection solutions into chip and hardware designs, which should hopefully remove a significant proportion of the current risks for businesses and services in the connected smart products of the future.
Greg Clark, business secretary, had this to say on the matter: “This could be a real step-change in computer and online security, better protecting businesses, services and consumers from cyber-attacks resulting in benefits for consumers and the economy. With businesses having to invest more and more in tackling ever more complex cyber attacks, designing in security measures into the hardware’s fabric will not only protect our businesses and consumers but ultimately cut the growing cybersecurity costs to businesses.”
“With businesses having to invest more and more in tackling ever more complex cyber attacks, designing in security measures into the hardware’s fabric will not only protect our businesses and consumers but ultimately cut the growing cybersecurity costs to businesses.”
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has also just announced that new funding is now being made available to help drive diversity in cyber security. In all, four new projects across England will benefit from an investment of at least £500,000, with the idea being to boost the total number and the diversity of those working within the UK’s cyber security industry.
At Stellarise, we’ve been dealing with the changing threat landscape for the last ten years and have seen the complexity and skill in the way attacks are launched increase year on year. As well as implementing some of the best security solutions available, we’ve built our own layer of proactive defence alerts which allow us to monitor and check on activity across our clients that can indicate malicious activity.
If you’re interested in finding outing out more about the steps we take to improve cyber security and the training, software and hardware we recommend to help protect your business, please fill out this form:
