UK firms at increasing risk of cyber attacks

Insurance provider Hiscox has released its third Cyber Readiness Report, which analysed data from 5,400 organisations both private and public across the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain and Holland. The in-depth report, which also measures the same businesses on their cyber security strategy and ability to deal with attacks, has presented some hugely significant statistics for UK organisations when it comes to attacks.

The headline news is that attacks are on the rise, with a 15% increase on the number of UK firms reporting a breach of some description from 40% in 2018 to 55%. Cyber security budgets for British organisations are typically lower than the average, with $900,000 set aside for them as opposed to $1.46m for firms in the other countries quizzed in the report.

However, that’s offset by the lessened cost of breaches; the average cost of a breach or attack for a UK firm sits at $243,000, which shaves almost a third off the same cost ($369,000) for the US, France et al. Finally, British firms were also most likely to be able to clearly measure the impact of any incidents.

The overall picture paints an unsurprising portrait; cyber-attacks, across these seven countries at least, are on the rise with 61% of firms questioned in the report specifying that they had been the victim of at least one attack in the past year. Alongside that, only 10% of those firms were regarded by Hiscox as being cyber security experts, meaning that they possessed effective strategies and the ability to execute them in the event of a cyber-attack.

Hiscox’s cyber CEO Gareth Wharton offered the following on the report’s findings: “This is the third Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report and, for the first time, a significant majority of firms report one or more cyber-attacks in the past 12 months.

“Where hackers formerly focused on larger companies, small and medium-sized firms now look equally vulnerable. The cyber threat has become the unavoidable cost of doing business today.

“The one positive is that we see more firms taking a structured approach to the problem, with a defined role for managing cyber strategy and an increased readiness to transfer the risk to an insurer by way of a standalone cyber insurance.”

The report’s findings on UK firms comes at an interesting time for the insurance industry in this country, with insurance governor MacTavish’s own report receiving plenty of attention across Britain for their stark listing of what it believes to be significant flaws seen across the entire market. The Association of British Insurers has strongly denied the claims, but Hiscox’s findings are unlikely to put the matter to bed.