Cyber threat

The State of Information Security in 2013 – Survey Results Out

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has released the 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey . It makes for pretty depressing reading. It seems that cyber criminals are lasering in on both large and small businesses, with SMEs increasingly vulnerable.

This infographic by Via Resource counts the cost of a “worst-case” breach for both small or large businesses.

A clarion call for SMEs to up their game

In all areas the number of attacks and, more importantly, the cost of these attacks has risen but the major impact is the cost on SMEs who are now seeing incident levels only previously seen by large organisations.

This is a worrying trend but perhaps not surprising. In general SMEs spend the least on protecting from an information security incident and are therefore an easier target.

Doing the basics can really help (see our previous blog – Protect Your System From Cyber Threat With These 7 Basic Security Controls ) but lots of SMEs are not applying best practice advice. Until they do it is likely the 2014 report will look even worse.

Cyber attacks are here to stay until we can protect ourselves appropriately. All organisation need to up their information security game. It’s not all bad news though. As you secure your information you’ll strengthen your business in the process.

Get the full report

• The full report and executive summary is available here – http://www.pwc.co.uk/audit-assurance/publications/2013-information-security-breaches-survey.jhtml .
• Financial Director magazine adds its own survey information and gives some useful ideas on how to mitigate the cyber risk here – http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/financial-director/feature/2275282/cyber-crime-is-it-on-your-radar