Report finds Phishing is still a major issue for British businesses
Blog|by Leanne Bevan|9 May 2022
London, UK - April 2022, ESET, a global leader in cyber security, has conducted a study into the state of cyber security for businesses in the United Kingdom, analysing historic data to discover how the rates of cyber security incidents are changing. The analysis also looks to uncover which industries are targeted the most and which cyber incidents are most common amongst UK businesses.
The research revealed that it's the media sector which has been hit the hardest by cybercrime with 39 reported incidents, followed by online technology and telecoms and retail and manufacturing.
Out of all the incidents reported, phishing was by far the biggest incident type with 2,694 cases reported, which was 1,350 more than unauthorised access in second place.
The most common types of cyber security incidents since Q1 2019/2020
How have cyber security incidents increased?
Q2 of 2020/21 saw the highest number of cyber security incidents with 737, possibly due to people working online from home due to COVID restrictions and a number of experts reporting a 105% increase in ransomware attacks in 2021.
The sectors with the highest proportion of cyber incidents
While it had a relatively low number of data security incidents overall, the Media sector had the highest share of cyber incidents.
Retail and Manufacture had the highest number of cyber incidents overall at 943, followed by General Business (858) and Finance, Insurance and Credit (788). Cyber security comes in all different forms, from a hacker simply guessing your passwords to your personal belongings such as a laptop or mobile phone being stolen, but which types of cyber security incidents are the most common?
When looking at cyber incidents overall, ‘Data emailed to incorrect recipient’ is the most common with 3,719 occurrences since Q1 of 2019/20. ‘Data posted or faxed to incorrect recipient’ and ‘Loss/theft of paperwork or data left in insecure location’ followed by 2,806 and 1,931 occurrences respectively.
Jake Moore, Global Cyber Security Advisor at ESET, commented on the findings: “Clever phishing attempts are increasing and can even deceive those who are aware of them. Reading something which applies pressure or urgency to verify or hand over information, can easily make people overlook the scam, which often shows no obvious or immediate clues. Verifying authentic emails has never been more important but remains your best bet in beating the fraudsters. Criminals continue to use emails as their number one attack vector of choice in the hope that they can install malware or take over email accounts, masquerading as someone is known to the victim to siphon off sensitive information. Organisations must ensure they are prepared for phishing emails by having robust controls in places such as spam filters and multi-factor authentication, however, user awareness and training remain the best defence against these increasing attacks.”
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