Cyber Attacks – the biggest risk facing UK Business in 2016

The biggest risks to UK business in 2016 include the continuing concern over the Chinese economy, Saudi Arabia’s drive to manage the international oil market and production in the west, and according to Control Risks, London-based security consultants, cyber attacks.

As mentioned in a previous article on the risk of security breach, according to the Breach Level Index, 245,919,393 data records across 888 individual breach incidents were recorded in the first half of 2015.

Control Risks chief executive, Richard Fenning, said: “The number of hacking attacks has increased over the past year and the fear is in boardrooms that they are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

He goes on to say:

“Cyber attacks are a clear and present danger to major British companies and I think we will see much younger people with much greater technical ability sitting on boards as a result.”

The prediction was announced in Control Risks annual Risk Map report. It states a 200% increase in targeted cyber attacks in the past 12 months, with politically motivated hacking attacks increasing by 56%.

Hardware system cyber attacks will become most common in 2016 including so-called “ransomware” attacks, which prevents users from accessing their system or files being a particular concern.

While hacking and cyber attacks are on the increase, it is believed protection has been increased to make it more difficult for hackers to take down a critical infrastructure system such as the power grid. But smaller business telecommunications and data systems are a high risk. In fact, small businesses have never been more vulnerable as cyber attacks tend to be so-called ‘surgical strikes’ where a small network is compromised.

Despite recent headline grabbing security breaches to UK companies such as Talk Talk & JD Wetherspoon, only 4% of UK SMEs have insurance cover to protect themselves from a cyber security breach. MF Communications offer security plans and services to help companies manage their telecommunications systems against toll fraud and other cyber crime.

MF Communications is a global business telecoms provider supplying new, refurbished and remanufactured telecoms products to companies in over 100 countries, worldwide.