Data breaches more common than rain in the UK
The UK has something of a reputation for its wet climate, and its citizens for constantly talking about the weather. So it may come as a surprise to find that in the UK the chance of experiencing a data breach is higher than that of encountering a rainy day.
A survey by technology services company Probrand shows 43 percent of UK businesses having suffered a cyber breach or attack in the last 12 months as against just 36.4 percent chance on average of encountering a wet day.
More worrying is that the study finds 44 percent of businesses are failing to properly protect their client and employee data by not adequately securing their server. In addition 37 percent of the UK workers surveyed say they don't believe they have important information stored on their server, revealing just how naïve many workers are about the sensitive nature of both the commercial and personal data they are storing.
Matt Royle, marketing director at Probrand says:
More than ever, it's vitally important for businesses to take data security seriously, the heart of which is server security. Measures should be taken to protect data at the point of storage, in-flight and across mobile devices, and a secure firewall should be applied to stop malicious internet attacks at the perimeter.
In addition, employee training around handling data and instilling a 'trust nothing' culture supports improved information governance, which protects against non-compliance fines and reputational fall out from a breach.
Given the shocking statistics that dictate it is a case of 'when' not 'if' a cyber attack will occur, the final piece of the jigsaw is to ring fence and protect business continuity with a solid and well tested Disaster Recovery plan and process. No backup and recovery plan significantly increases the likelihood of a business ceasing to trade beyond a breach.
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