Nearly 30pc SME staff lack cyber threat training

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Some 27% of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are failing to educate staff on the threat of a cyber attack.

Some 27pc of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are failing to educate staff on the threat of a cyber attack.

According to research by cyber insurance provider CFC this is despite the fact that nearly fourty per cent of CFC’s claims in 2016 were caused by phishing attacks that could have been avoided with better education and training.

According to CFC, the main reason given for this it that SMEs are “not sure where to start”, which could be a result of not understanding their cyber risk profile, with 20% of SMEs never assessing the business exposure to cyber risk.

In September 2016, a Juniper Research report revealed that 74% of UK SMEs think they are safe from cyber attack, despite half of them admitting having suffered a data breach.

There is still naivety about the significance of a data breach, according to the report, which showed that although 69% of respondents would contact someone immediately if they discovered a cyber breach, 18% would wait until the next working day if they did not consider it a big problem.

CFC reported a 78% rise in cyber claims from 2015 to 2016, with 90% of claims by volume coming from businesses with less than £50 million in revenue, highlighting just how vulnerable SMEs are to relatively unsophisticated cyber attacks.

When SMEs were asked what poses the biggest threat to their business, cyber crime came in second, topped only by Brexit.

Some 31% of IT companies report cyber crime as the main threat, followed by 25% in the manufacturing sector. By comparison, just 8% overall are concerned about traditional crime. Despite these worries, 80% of SMEs still do not buy cyber insurance.

At CFC’s recent Cyber Symposium, Inga Beale, CEO of Lloyd’s, said: “It’s one of the most high profile risks businesses are facing at the moment, and yet CEOs seem to be in denial about its impacts and their ability to deal with it.

“Businesses are either not looking for solutions, or if they are, they don’t know where to find them or understand the value of them. Insurers need to explain the benefits cyber insurance can bring.”

Graeme Newman, chief innovation officer at CFC, said it was worrying to see that 56% of SMEs do not have an incident response plan in place that outlines roles and responsibilities in the event of a cyber attack.

“SMEs must take a two-pronged approach to guarding against an attack – implementing good security and risk management practices along with a strong cyber insurance policy,” he said.

“For SMEs that are time-poor and cash-strapped, cyber insurance policies exist not only to pay for financial losses should their systems be compromised, but also to help them handle and resolve incidents quickly and effectively.”

However, Newman predicted that although only 9% of SMEs are worried about regulatory fines as a result of a cyber attack, that figure is likely to increase once companies are required to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) from 25 May 2018.

Whereas the UK’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, is currently able to issue penalties of up to £500,000, the GDPR will introduce fines of up to €20 million or 4% of an organisation’s annual global turnover, whichever is greater.

This means that if data breaches remain at 2015 levels, the fines paid to the European regulator could see a near 90 fold increase, from £1.4 billion in 2015 to £122 billion, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has calculated, based on the maximum fine of 4% of global turnover.

For UK SMEs, this could see regulatory fines for data breaches rise to £52 billion, a 57 fold increase, averaging £13,000 per SME.

So if you want to save yourself stress, money and a damaged reputation from a cyber incident please ring us now on 01242 521967 or email assist@cyber139.com or complete the form on our contact page NOWContact Cyber 139

Only 5% of FT 100 cos have cyber board member expertise

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Only 5% of FT 100 company boards have a board director with specialist technology or cyber security experience, according to research by Deloitte.

Only 5% of FT 100 company boards have a board director with specialist technology or cyber security experience, according to research by Deloitte.This is despite cyber risk being identified as a principal risk by the vast majority of them. Of the type of cyber attacks disclosed as a threat, unauthorised access to systems ranked most common (19%), followed by hacking (13%) and malware (13%). Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks were only mentioned by five companies, despite Deloitte predictions that we could see ten million DDoS incidents in 2017.

More than half of companies mentioned cyber contingency, crisis management or disaster recovery plans in their annual report. Of these, however, only 58% disclosed that these plans had been simulated in test scenarios over the year.

The most commonly disclosed potential impacts of cyber breaches were business disruption (68%), reputational damage (58%), and data loss (45%).

Clearly, the more frequently and stringently mitigation plans are tested, the more resilient and responsive the company. Interestingly, very few reports identified employee action as one of their cyber security threats. Company employees are, knowingly or unintentionally, the most common cause of a cyber breach.

Deloitte’s analysis proposes seven principles to improve cyber disclosure when finalising reporting:

  • Every sector, although not every company, identifies cyber as a principal risk – think carefully if you have not done so.
  • The value destruction capability of cyber risk is very high, ranging from remediation demands to huge reputational damage. Detailed disclosure is therefore worthwhile to highlight the risks to shareholders and let them know you are taking it seriously.
  • The better disclosures are company specific, year specific and provide sufficient detail to give meaningful information to investors and other stakeholders.
  • Boards and board committees are increasingly educating themselves about the cyber threat and challenging management on how they are dealing with the risk.
  • Companies should take credit for what they are doing, including describing who has executive responsibility, board level responsibilities, the policy framework, internal controls, and disaster recovery plans.
  • Boards should think about what could be missing from their disclosures, for example a clear indication of the main threats facing the company, who poses those threats, the likelihood, possible impact and detail about what the company – and the board – is doing to manage or mitigate those particular risks.
  • Finally, if your disclosure does not look strong enough after taking credit for what the company is doing already, it is time to ask whether you are actually doing enough to manage cyber risk.

The report can be found at: https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/press-releases/articles/just-5-of-ftse-100-companies-disclose.html

So if you want to save yourself stress, money and a damaged reputation from a cyber incident please ring us now on 01242 521967 or email safe@cyber139.com or complete the form on our contact page NOWContact Cyber 139

Cost of Yahoo hack shows executive cyber security responsibilities

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Yahoo’s recent hacks reinforces the responsibilities on board executives for cyber security as the data losses have  cost its top lawyer his job, CEO Marissa Mayer millions in bonuses, and $350 million off its sale price.

Cost of Yahoo hack shows executive cyber security responsibilitiesThe Yahoo board has decided to withhold CEO Marissa Mayer’s 2016 annual bonus in connection with a series of data breaches and accepted her offer to forego her 2017 stock award.

The SEC filing also revealed that general counsel Ronald Bell has resigned without severance pay after an independent committee brought in to investigate the breaches concluded that the Yahoo management team failed to respond effectively to the breach discovered in 2014.

The investigation report said that although Yahoo’s security team had uncovered evidence that a hacker backed by an unnamed foreign government had breached user accounts in 2014, executives “failed to act sufficiently” and that the incident “was not properly investigated and analysed at the time.”

The investigation revealed that at the time the breach was discovered, Yahoo notified only 26 people that their accounts had been breached.

“The Independent Committee found that failures in communication, management, inquiry and internal reporting contributed to the lack of proper comprehension and handling of the 2014 Security Incident. The Independent Committee also found that the Audit and Finance Committee and the full board were not adequately informed of the full severity, risks, and potential impacts of the 2014 Security Incident and related matters,” according to the SEC filing.

Yahoo did not disclose the 2014 breach until September 2016, when it began notifying holders of 500 million accounts that associated email addresses, birth dates, security question answers, and other personal information may have been stolen.

Don’t forget that this hack also effected BT and Sky email users- as they use the Yahoo email system as the backbone for their own white label systems.

Three months later, Yahoo revealed it had uncovered a separate hack in 2013 affecting about one billion accounts.

However, the SEC filing revealed that 32 million user accounts have also been accessed over the past two years by state-sponsored hackers using forged cookies. Evidence of the intrusions was discovered by an external forensic team investigating the previously disclosed breaches.

According to some security commentators, the news of the 32 million compromised accounts indicates that Yahoo is probably still struggling to understand the true scope of the breaches.

After months of speculation, Verizon announced in February 2017 a revised deal for acquiring Yahoo’s core business that was $350 million less than the original due to revelations of two major data breaches that were made after the deal was signed in July 2016.

The business cost of poor cyber security has been further underlined by the fact that more than 40 lawsuits have been filed seeking damages for the breaches, and Yahoo is facing an SEC probe into whether it appropriately disclosed information about the data breach.

The impact of the breaches hows that a cyber attack could also have a significant impact for companies in merger and acquisition discussions.

While the damage to reputation and brand has always been a primary reason for concern for organisations that were not seen to be implementing sufficient housekeeping and security controls, the real damage to Yahoo’s valuation will ensure that cyber security related issues become an even higher priority.

So if you want to save yourself stress, money and a damaged reputation from a cyber incident please ring us now on 01242 521967 or email safe@cyber139.com or complete the form on our contact page NOWContact Cyber 139