The annual Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report, which gauges businesses’ preparedness to combat cyber incidents and breaches, surveyed over 5,000 professionals responsible for their cyber security strategy from the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Republic of Ireland, and The Netherlands.
Overall, the report’s findings confirm what we already suspect: cyberattacks are on the rise. The Hiscox Report found that cyberattacks rose for the third year running – 53% of firms suffered a cyber attack, up from 48% last year. While median costs for those attacked dipped slightly, from almost $17,000 to just over $16,000, significant losses are still possible. The costs of cyberattacks have reached $250,000 or more for 12% of attack victims.
Beyond the topline trends, the report analyses how cyber threats impact specific regions, sectors, and business sizes. When it comes to the U.K., the findings are mixed.
Here are the headlines from the report specific to the U.K.:
U.K. businesses are amongst the least likely to face cyber attacks
We start with some good news. U.K. businesses should feel encouraged as they are second only to Belgium as least likely to encounter cyber attacks. However, we don’t recommend dropping your defences, as the rate of attacks remains high. Nearly half (48%) of U.K. businesses reported at least one cyber attack in the last 12 months, up from 42% in last year’s study and 36% in 2021.
59% of U.K. organisations said they are more vulnerable to cyber attacks due to employees working remotely
While the pandemic has ended, many employees who left their offices to work from home have stayed there permanently. Employees working remotely often rely on unsecured devices and may access company email on unsecured networks. VPNs and free remote access tools offer organisations quick fixes, but these solutions are mere band-aids in the face of highly sophisticated cybercriminals.
Certain lines of work are more at risk than others
The report gives each sector a ‘risk score’ based on how optimistic business leaders are about their ability to deal with future cyber attacks. It considers several factors, including the number and cost of cyber events faced by surveyed firms within each of the sectors. The report found that the property sector has the highest risk score, followed closely by pharma and healthcare, travel and leisure, professional services, food and drink, and construction. The construction sector, in particular, tops the list of industries hit with a cloud server breach.
The smallest firms face the most considerable risk
The smallest firms have the highest risk scores when organised by business size. Those with one to nine and 10 to 49 employees come out on top, with scores of 48 and 41 (scores range from seven to 70, with 7 being the lowest risk and 70 being the highest). These are up from 39 and 37 last year.
How Data Backups Can Minimise The Impact Of Cyber Attacks
While U.K. organisations fare better than most other countries in terms of cyberattacks, they are hardly immune to threats. That’s why firms should take proactive measures to help prevent cyberattacks. The report recommends several focus areas, from enforcing multi-factor authentication (read more about MFA for Salesforce) to fixing security vulnerabilities and monitoring security event data.
In addition to these proactive security measures though, it’s essential to also have systems in place to minimise the impact of a cyberattack if one does occur.
The report found that in the event of ransomware attacks specifically, 46% of firms recovered their data from their backups. There’s still room for improvement though- a third of those attacked (32%) said they paid up because they had no backup.
Backups are critical, but not all backup methods will help you fully recover from a cyberattack. For your data to remain accessible if the attack has infected production systems, backups must be stored on separate infrastructure from the production data. Doing so prevents the cyberattack from spreading to the backups, which would compromise them as well.
How Own Can Help
If it wasn’t already, it’s clear from this research that cyberattacks are a threat against which every organisation should protect itself. Now is the time to secure your SaaS data from these threats—before the next attack impacts you.
Learn more about our top-rated SaaS backup and recovery solution, Own Recover, or request a demo below.
