CYBER SECURITY BREACHES DOWN BUT COST TO BUSINESS RISES

Cyber-crime is perhaps the single biggest threat to businesses today as attackers become continually more innovative in their methods and we should all be on our guard. But while security breaches levels have decreased slightly, the latest series of Information Security Breaches Surveys, commissioned by The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and conducted by PwC, shows there has been a significant rise in the cost of individual breaches.

The average cost of breaches has nearly doubled in the last year and significantly so for smaller businesses. In the latest survey carried out since the early 1990s, PwC interviewed 1,125 respondents and found that the overall cost of security breaches for all type of organisations has increased; 10% of organisations that suffered a breach in the last year were so badly damaged by the attack that they had to change the nature of their business.

Cost to large organisations:
£600k – £1.15m is the average cost to a large organisation of its worst security breach of the year
(up from £450k – £850k a year ago)

Cost to smaller businesses:

£65k – £115k is the average cost to a small business of its worst security breach of the year
(up from £35k – £65k a year ago)

Top 10 Steps for Cyber Security

The Government has issued guidance for businesses looking to protect themselves in cyberspace – the Top 10 steps to Cyber Security – which is available online – and has been updated to reflect the changes in risk.

The 10 Cyber Security Steps – originally published in 2012 and now used by around two thirds of the FTSE350 – remain the same and are outlined HERE.

But alongside this second version of the 10 Steps, the Government are also publishing a new paper, “Common Cyber Attacks: Reducing the Impact”. The paper sets out what a common cyber-attack looks like and how attackers typically execute them. Understanding the cyber environment and adopting the 10 Steps are effective means in protecting your organisation from these attacks.