Businesses must guard against security breaches
Everyone is talking about cybersecurity and ACCA is one of several organisations to have issued reports on this area.
What does it mean for businesses? 81% of large companies have reported some form of security breach, costing each large organisation on average between £600,000 and £1.5m, and attacks on SMEs are increasing dramatically.
Reported cases (most cases will not be reported) show 2,460,000 instances of computer misuse, 404,000 of unauthorised access to personal information and the cost of fraud for UK businesses is around 3% of total business expenditure.
For many businesses there are obvious risks such as disruption of supplies, sales and the loss of cash, but two other areas stand out:
What can be done? Lockton, in a recent article for practitioners, advised:
'Make sure you and your colleagues are aware of the risks and how to protect against them.
Simple steps you can take now to help protect your business include:
Clearly, education and being able to demonstrate that appropriate steps have been taken are essential requirements for both boards and practitioners.
Useful educational starting points are:
The key questions to keep under constant review are:
Useful guidance is provided by HMRC. It highlights the following as bogus email addresses:
HMRC also provides examples of emails, letters, text messages and bogus calls used by scammers and fraudsters to get your personal information.