50% Of UK Businesses Are Not Prepared To Invest In Security

According to the 2018: Risk Value Report published by NTT Security, half of UK firms are still not prepared to invest in proactive measures to secure their organisation against cyber threats.

The report polled 1,800 global decision makers, examining business attitudes to risk and the value of information security and highlighted some serious concerns surrounding organisations failure to increase Cyber Security awareness and preparedness.

The key findings of the report were:

20% of businesses would choose to pay ransoms demanded by hackers, rather than investing in information security to protect their organisation from a breach in an attempt to reduce costs.

30% of businesses are still unsure as to whether they would pay the ransom or not if their organisation was the victim of ransomware.

41% of organisations claim they have not suffered a data breach. However, of these 10% expect that they will be the victim of a breach at some point in the future and a further 31% of respondents do not expect to suffer from a breach at all.

Finally, 73% of respondents were concerned about a loss of customer confidence in their business resulting from a breach and 69% about damage to their reputation.

It is a worrying statistic that one fifth of UK businesses are willing to put their customers data at risk by paying hackers ransom demands just to cut costs. Especially with attacks making headlines on such a regular basis.

While it is encouraging that a substantial amount of UK businesses are prepared to take a long term and proactive approach to security, there are still many organisations that have underestimated the full cost of a breach.

The extent of a breach goes further than the initial attack on your network and even if you pay the ransom, there is no guarantees that your data will be returned.

Furthermore, under the new GDPR regulations, firms are legally required to report breaches to the ICO and could face huge financial penalties up to €20m or 4% of annual turnover, whichever is higher for breaching the regulations.

In addition to the financial implications, customer confidence and your organisations reputation can also be affected by a breach of your security. According to research by CSO 86.55% of customers were “not at all likely” or “not very likely” to do business with an organisation which had suffered a breach.

It is argued that damage to your reputation is a greater risk to your organisation than the financial implications of a breach as your organisation would struggle to bring in new clients if they lost trust in you as the result of a successful cyber attack on your business.

SES is a global information assurance provider To improve your organisations security further, SES offer a wide range of Cyber Security services which can be tailored to your individual requirements.

To speak to one of our specialists and discuss your organisations Cyber Security requirements in more detail,  please get in touch and one of our specialists will get back to you within one business day. 

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