Taxing Times: The Value of Cyber Security to Your Business

More and more businesses are pushed to adopt cloud-based technology by their customers, who expect to be able to access their accounts, get financial advice, and do their banking and shopping online. This drive towards an increase in online activity has highlighted the need for ever-more robust cyber security strategies. In fact, digital transformation acceleration over the past few years has become the biggest cyber security challenge – or headache – for 90% of senior executives. 

With the security landscape constantly evolving, as well as the level and sophistication of cyber threats and attacks growing, there is an ever-pressing need by businesses to ensure their business is protected. But it’s not an inexpensive exercise and puts added strain on the financial purse strings. However, before you press that button to cancel your security investment, let’s look at the value of cyber security to your business and why it’s important to ensure you are protected. 

According to research by IT Governance, there were 71 cyber security incidents publicly declared in September 2023. Nearly four million data records were compromised – that’s in one month alone. Some of the largest data breaches in recent months include: 

- MOVEit, when millions of people’s personal details were hacked. The breach impacted Nuance, a Microsoft healthcare technology company, CareSource and the National Student Clearinghouse. The security breach is still affecting companies and individuals. 

- DarkBeam, the most recent major breach allegedly left the interfaces of Elasticsearch and Kibana unprotected, exposing millions of user records, including emails and passwords. 

- The UK Electoral Commission experienced a complex cyber-attack where hackers gained access to the personal information of an estimated 40 million people. 

This year, the financial services sector has reported 640 cyber security breaches to the ICO (the Information Commissioner's Office); that’s a three-fold increase over the previous year. Now that we’ve scared you (sorry!), let’s look at how you can protect your business. 

So, why is data protection so important? Several reasons, legal and otherwise: 

- To comply with the UK’s data protection laws, which.GDPR currently governs. The Government has a Bill going through Parliament to make amendments to the UK data protection laws specific to the UK. 

- To protect employee data, including health and financial information, criminal records and other sensitive/confidential personal information. 

- To protect your business’s interests, including financial losses, legal liabilities and reputation. 

- To prevent fraud and cybercrime. 

- To save your time and money. 

- To build trust with your target audience – 76% of consumers won’t buy from a company if they don’t trust them to look after their data. Indeed, 81% say how a business handles its personal data indicates how it considers and respects its customers. 

As you can see, implementing cyber-security strategies to protect your business is more than just complying with your legal obligations. 

But what steps must you take to protect your business from cyber threats? We’ve put together our top tips to help you. 

1. Make sure all your software is updated consistently. One of the biggest risks is outdated software, as hackers use the vulnerabilities in old versions of your software to get access to your systems. 

2. Implement 2FA or MFA. If you allow customers to create online accounts, you must employ 2FA (two-factor authentication) or MFA (multi-factor authentication) protocols. This means users have more than one form of identification to log in to their accounts. 

3. Always monitor your systems. Set up procedures that automatically monitor your networks and systems for suspicious or abnormal activity. 

4. Invest in cyber-security solutions. It is well worth investing money into cyber-security solutions, like firewalls and malware scanners, to protect the business against various threats. 

5. Establish a data breach action plan. There’s no guarantee you won’t get hacked, but, if you did, would you know how to get your company back up and running, how to respond and what steps you need to take? Establishing a comprehensive data breach action plan and ensuring everyone in the company understands it and knows what to do will go a long way to reducing the impact on your business and your customers. 

6. Understand your data protection responsibilities. Your customers have the legal right to ask what personal data you hold about them. They also have the legal right to submit a subject action request asking you to delete some or all of the data you hold. There are also legal responsibilities on how you must store, use, dispose of and protect their data. Always be transparent and honest about their data, what you do with it, how long you intend to keep it and how you will dispose of it. 

7. Make sure your website displays a data protection and privacy notice. You must have visible on your website your company’s data protection and privacy notice that anyone visiting your website can read. This should include how you manage their data. 

8. Education matters. The biggest cyber security risk to your business is human error, such as clicking on links in suspicious emails, not protecting or too weak passwords, or not changing them often enough and using WiFi sources that aren’t secure. Ensure everyone knows the latest risks and how to combat them, what to look out for and avoid, and that they are up-to-date with current cyber-security best practices. 

The good news is that more people know the importance of data protection in the UK. The bad news is that most people don’t know how to protect themselves from fraud and cyber crimes. So, following these steps will go a long way to protect your business and your customers. 

It’seeze is your local professional web design company in Bristol that specialises in providing affordable website packages for start-ups and small businesses. We ensure that every website we build incorporates the latest and most robust security measures to protect your business. Call us today to start building the website you deserve to make your business a success.