Insights

Ransomware and state affiliated hacktivist groups dominated the cyber news headlines this week.

2022 has been a difficult year for cyber security, with many organisations struggling to get to grips with the security challenges of working safely in a decentralised workplace. As the Cyber Security Breaches Survey highlights, 39% of businesses report having cyber security breaches or attacks in the last 12 months.  

Our Incident Response Team has had another busy year as organisations fell victim to a wide range of cyber attacks and incidents. In this blog we cover the top 3 things our team thinks organisations need to consider as we head into 2023. 

With the complexity of cyber threats increasing across the board, general approaches to cyber security aren’t enough to protect your organisation. You need cyber security that can address each threat on a case-by-case basis.  

The World Cup has kicked off and as predicted the surge in tournament related phishing campaigns has appeared. You may also have noticed a rise in the number of scam emails and texts relating to the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales too.

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the way we work in the UK and Ireland forever. As companies experimented with remote working to maintain productivity, many employees became accustomed to the idea of working from home and enjoying a greater work-life balance.  

The cybersecurity world is preparing for three major events in the calendar over the coming weeks. The FIFA World Cup, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, all events that typically result in increased activity by cyber criminals as they seek to exploit shoppers and football fans.

Cyber criminals and other threat actors are looking to kick their activities into a higher gear as three major upcoming events provide the perfect opportunities to launch phishing and other cyber-attacks.

Your data is your organisation’s most valuable asset. With enough transparency it can provide you with a huge amount of insight into how to improve your business, but in the wrong hands, it can irreparably damage your reputation and cost millions in compliance liabilities.  

It’s been another busy week in the world of cyber security. The ongoing war in Ukraine has seen NATO warn of a growing cyber threat, and all eyes were on the US for signs of any attacks aimed at causing disruption to the mid-term elections.

While many organisations spend thousands on preventative cyber security tools, many make the mistake of overlooking the fact that cyber criminals are spending less time relying on brute force to gain access to protected information and more time on manipulating or bribing employees into giving up personal information.  

This week we learned how one ransomware group is responsible for the vast majority of ransomware attacks this year and a new report from the NCSC highlighted the true scale of cybercrime in the UK.