Cyber-attacks on Businesses in 2019 

UK firms have reported that the amounts of cyber-attacks into 2019 have rocketed. This has been in relation to most businesses stating that they are not prepared for the breaches according to research uncovered from Hiscox. 

 In 2019, the insurer found 55% of firms had faced an attack, which is an amount that has gone up from 40% last year. However, almost three-quarters of the firms are graded as beginners in terms of cyber readiness. Hiscox said that a lot of businesses felt that they were not at risk. 

The firm had surveyed more than 5,400 small, medium and big businesses across seven countries, including the UK, Germany, US, Belgium, France, Netherlands and Spain. It had said that there had been an increase in the amounts of cyber-attacks with more than 60% of companies having to report one or more attack, from 45% in 2018. Average losses from the breaches also climbed from £176,000 to £283,000, which is an increase of 61%. 

In spite of this, the insurer said that the percentage of the companies scoring top marks on cybersecurity had fallen with the UK businesses are doing bad. British companies have the lowest cybersecurity budgets; spending on average less than $900,000 on average compared with $1.46million across the group. They were also joint least likely with US companies to have a defined role for cybersecurity on their staff. Head of Cyber at Hiscox Gareth Wharton said that the low UK spending could be determined by a large number of small businesses in Britain. 

Gareth also states that they may feel they will not be targeted as they only intend to read about massive breaches in the press. If they think that they won’t be targeted, then they may be less likely to spend on cybersecurity.  

Nevertheless, Hiscox also found out that the average the cost of an attack in the UK was lower than an average of $243,000, compared with $906,000 in Germany and $486,000 in Belgium.  

New regulations have also provoked an action, with eight in ten UK organisations saying they had made changes since the outline of new EU data protection rules last year.