Cyber attacks and related incidents against UK businesses continue to rise at an unstoppable rate. In the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022 phishing attempts were reported by 83% of businesses.
The statistics in the annual Cyber Security Breaches survey report shows a clear image of the severity of the threat that an average business faces. In keeping with the National Cyber Strategy, the yearly survey is intended to be a useful research study for the UK’s cyber resilience.
According to Global Economic Crime Survey, over two-thirds of UK firms (64%) had encountered cyber attack, corruption, or other financial crime in the last 24 months. This is a significant increase from 51% in 2018 and 57% in 2020. It is much higher than the global average of 46% in 2022, according to PwC.
The most common sort of fraud recorded were cyber attacks,, which dropped from 41% in 2020 to 30% in 2022. Supply chain events, which were included in the study for the first time, accounted for 20%.
Most reported cybercrimes in the United Kingdom (51%) were connected to third parties, compared to only 43% globally. The top three causes have been identified as customers, hackers, and vendors.
Fran Marwood, PwC’s director of digital and forensic investigations, said the decrease in cyber attacks was surprising.
Some of the market patterns, based on what we’re observing, appear to be temporary. For example, if traditional procedures and company culture develop to keep up with remote working, incidents of fraud and misbehaviour may go unnoticed.
By a country mile, phishing is the most prevalent attack vector. More complex attack types, such as denial of service, malware, and ransomware, were identified by around 24% of users. Despite its low ubiquity, ransomware is a major threat to businesses, with 53% refusing to pay ransoms.
As more and more business is conducted online, and we live in an era of rising cyber risk, it is critical that every organisation take cyber security seriously, Julia Lopez, the minister of cyber, says. Regardless of how large or small your company is, you must take actions to strengthen digital resilience right away and follow the free government guidance to keep us all secure digitally.
The financial effect of these accidents might be significant. Over a quarter of UK users estimated it to be between $1-5 million.
According to Marwood:
Organizations must also have security measures in place so that they can respond quickly when cyber attack occur. If they fail to do so, they may face a heavy loss.
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