Cyber security has dominated news headlines all year.
According to the IT Governance UK website, the country has had no less than 71 web security incidents in September alone, and 838 incidents for the year overall.
In light of the uptick in cyber security attacks, the UK Parliament is launching an inquiry to figure out just how resilient the country’s critical national infrastructure is, after stating that the country is the third most targeted in the world, when it comes to cyber-attacks.
The in-depth inquiry, which seeks to uncover possible weak spots, will be overseen by the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, who have in past stated their concern over the number of attacks the UK is currently experiencing.
Along with the well-documented attacks which have been fairly consistent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee has made a point of expressing what it sees as concerns about competing priorities between the private companies (who at the moment own and control the majority of the UK’s critical national infrastructure) and the government.
Since it is quite common knowledge that computer products, including critical software, feature different levels of cyber security and as such have different strengths when it comes to cyber-resilience, it is understandable and quite possibly most welcomed news that the nation’s critical infrastructure is being given this extra attention.
“The committee … will explore the progress of UK CNI toward achieving recently announced resilience targets by 2025, and what support the sector needs to achieve those targets and efforts to make computer hardware architecture more secure by design to protect CNI,” the committee noted.
The committee will not be undertaking this mammoth task all by themselves. Since the critical national infrastructure is already mostly in the hands of private companies, the committee is inviting industry experts to give evidence and to answer the questions that will be asked about the cyber resilience. They will also be having a close look at the strengths and weaknesses of the both the National Cyber Strategy 2022 and Government Cyber Security Strategy 2022-2030
But how does this affect your company and why should it matter?
If 2023 was the year that cyber-attacks were ramped up to levels we’ve not seen before, then 2024 is set to be even more interesting (in a rather concerning sort of way).
Cyber-attacks are often more devastating, and a lot more frequent, than physical ones. And the result of company downtime, the loss of company data and the potential leaking of customer information, not only has a detrimental effect on company profits but it can also destroy trust and confidence, leading to less growth over the long term.
It is not just the critical infrastructure that has this year become more vulnerable and its systems in need of review.
In 2023, small businesses in the UK and the US have recorded higher instances of cyber-attacks, many of which have been successful.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Centre (ITRC) in the US, up to 73% of small US businesses have reported being victims of attacks in the last year and the majority of these attacks have attempted, and in some cases been successful, in creating data breaches. In the UK, the government estimates that small businesses can lose up to £1 100 per breach, and on average, annually, businesses lose up to £4 960 due to cybercrime.
Although this is a serious concern, when you have both an excellent cyber security system in place and a well-thought out business continuity plan set up, your business will become a less desirable, and somewhat impenetrable, target for cyber theft.
At 24/7 IT Services we have spent our careers learning as much as there is to know about cyber security and we are up to date with all the latest cyber security threats in the UK . We also offer expert business continuity plans, managed IT support, and more. Contact us today for a consultation or a quote.
