Analysis of cyber attacks targeting U.K. organizations highlights the effectiveness of social engineering attacks and the fact that businesses are missing the mark on how to stop it.
The U.K. Government just released their Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024 where they asked U.K. businesses and charities about their experiences with cyber attacks and breaches, their preparedness plans, response plans and the impacts of the attacks.
According to the survey results, half (50%) of all U.K. businesses and one-third (32%) of charities experienced cyber attacks or security breaches in the last year. And when you break down the proliferation of attacks, it’s 70% of mid-sized businesses and 74% of enterprise businesses.
In general, cybersecurity is pretty high on the priority list; 75% of businesses say it’s a high priority for them. And yet, only 22% of businesses have formal incident response plans in place. Only 33% say they use security tools designed for monitoring, 17% have done penetration testing and 10% have invested in threat intelligence.
What’s interesting is the top two attack/breach types in the report:
- 84% of businesses experienced phishing attacks
- 35% of businesses experienced impersonation of their own staff or organization online or in emails
And it’s these same two that are also considered the “most disruptive.” You’d think businesses would be focused on security measures specifically designed to stop the attacks they experience the most and see the greatest impact from.
And yet, only 18% have run some form of staff training (presumably security awareness training of some kind) as well as phishing testing against users. Both of the top attack/breach types have to do with users being fooled into engaging with a threat actor, or their malicious links and attachments.
If U.K. businesses want to see improvement, they’re going to need to take a look at where they’re weakest and shore up their security in those areas — in this case, their users.
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