Island businesses are being reminded of the risk posed by on-line crime. A recent event hosted by Swinton Business highlighted the impact that cyber-attacks can have on businesses of all sizes, especially SMEs. The event, held at the new CECAMM centre, showed that the disruption caused by cybercrime could have severe and lasting financial implications.
Delegates were also reminded that the law is changing regarding the handling and storage of personal data. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation framework will replace the Data Protection Act in May 2018. The new rules will force companies to provide full details of any data breach to relevant authorities within 72 hours.
“Cyber-crime is a scatter crime,” says John Cornett from Swinton Business. “Until systems are in place to protect your business it’s really a question of when, rather than if, you get attacked. Smaller firms are most at risk and could be put out of business immediately. I think a lot of people still have their head in the sand. The majority of people tell us ‘our IT department take care of that, we don’t need protection.’ I think only around 20% of companies are being proactive.
“Businesses need to be ready for May next year when the law changes. Insurance is there to protect you and it is out there. I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say it’s negligent, but if you aren’t covered, that’s very short-sighted.”
Jonathan Thornton from PC Consultants spoke to delegates about how businesses including local firms are being affected.
“It’s definitely a growing problem. We know that cyber attackers have hit Island businesses and it can have a devastating impact on small businesses. You often don’t know when the breach has happened, or when the hacker is going to use the data they have obtained.”
Gary Peace, MD of ESID Consulting, showed how easy it is to unwittingly share personal information on-line that can be used by fraudsters or hackers. He says the important thing to take away from the event is that every business is at risk.
“We need to get away from this idea of ‘cyber’ risk. It’s a major business risk, not at IT issue. The reality is that it’s normal crime, committed using a computer. It’s the biggest crime affecting this country now and the reports from places like GCHQ show that the risk can only get bigger. Our lives are increasingly lived on-line, so this isn’t going to go away.”
