Cyber security attacks are “relentless” on some financial institutions

With the ONS reporting last summer that a whopping 86% of people working from home were doing so as a result of Coronavirus, BBC News has reported that cyber security attacks on some financial institutions are “relentless”.

BBC News spoke to an IT network manager at a large financial services company, who shared his concerns that the company he works for is being “bombarded from all directions” by cyber security attacks. This follows on from some highly publicised attacks and data breaches last year, including the Financial Conduct Authority. According to The Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report 2020, an unnamed UK financial services company lost £71 million as a result of cyber attacks throughout the course of just one year.

Jason Chaplin, IT Backbone’s Director, advises that there are many measures businesses can take to help protect their company from cyber attacks, which can easily be championed by IT teams.

Jason’s top five tips to help IT professionals at any sized company make their business more robust against cyber attacks are:

1. Audit your business thoroughly, to identify where your cyber security may have weaknesses that could be exploited
2. Seek out guidance from a third party IT specialist who can help audit your business and IT infrastructure, as well as implementing recommendations to help strengthen your business against cyber attacks
3. Encourage users to create a unique, secure password for every site they log into, and to reset these every few months, or more often if preferred. Both Apple and Android devices can generate and save random secure passwords for you to use, and if using a computer rather than a smartphone, it’s easy to find websites that can generate secure passwords to use. For extra peace of mind, we recommend using multi factor authentication, and definitely don’t write passwords down anywhere!
4. Run training courses and refresher sessions to educate users throughout your business in how they can personally help the company to remain secure. In the training courses that IT Backbone runs, we share real life examples of phishing emails and other tactics that have been used to exploit IT infrastructure
5. Insure your business against cyber risks (research by gov.uk in 2020 discovered that less than a third of businesses were insured)

IT Backbone are perfectly placed to help strengthen companies’ infrastructure against cyber attacks – just get in touch with us today to let us know how we can help you.