British firms witnessed 230,000 cyber attacks in 2016 and this was revealed as a fact in a survey analysis conducted by Internet Service Provider ‘Beaming’. The survey added that on an average the volume of cyber attacks passing the corporate firewalls and hitting the cyber networks has reached the mark of 1K/ day for the first time in November. This is said to double up by the end of 2017.
Adding to it, a survey conducted in 2016 by KPMG confirmed that small businesses are becoming victims of seven million cyber crimes a year, costing the business sector a loss of £5.38 billion.
So, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council of England has decided to levy £122 billion pounds in fines on various companies operating in London against security breaches in 2018. Of that, around 52 billion pounds will be levied on SMBs.
Means, all those companies who have been neglecting cyber security tools in their network environments will have to pay a big price- as per the new National Cyber Security law formulated in November’16.
All these days, it was believed that only big businesses become victims of cyber attacks. But the latest survey conducted by various companies and the new cyber security strategy initiated by the government suggest that small and mediums sized businesses are also at high risk.
The most common risk to affect a small business is ransomware where cyber crooks take over a computer database and demand a ransom for unlocking the files for access.
In reality, larger firms have sophisticated tools in place and so it’s hard to penetrate into these networks for hackers. So, they aim at small businesses most likely to earn their living.
According to RSA, a multinational general insurance company headquartered in London, many companies not sufficiently protecting their firms yet. That too even after the onset of some high profile cyber attacks on big firms such as Yahoo, Tesco Bank, TalkTalk, and Camelot.
So, the British government has finally decided to come up with ‘Cyber Essentials’, a government-backed, industry supported scheme launching in this year to help firms protect themselves against cyber attacks.
As a part of this scheme, all those SMBs who fail to take measures against cyber threats will be fined heavily. This includes companies which do not take a cyber insurance cover against Cyber Hacks.
The Federation of Small Businesses has highly welcomed the launch of this Government Policy which will come into affect early next year.
