So, the question on all of our minds is… have cyber-attacks really risen in the last year? In this blog you will find statistics and the answer! Cyber-criminals are ever evolving, they are constantly using new incidents/situations in the world to attempt cyber-crime! Cyber-crime really is the party animal of life, a city that never sleeps so to speak! Which is why as a business and even in our personal lives – we should be as prepared as we can for cyber-attacks. To find out more about securing your business, click here.
- The UK has the highest number of cyber-crime victims per million internet users at 4783 in 2022, 40% over 2020 reports.
- According to Gov.uk, 39% of organisations who identified and reported an attack, the most common attack was phishing attempts (83%). Learn some basics on how to keep your organisation safe with these attacks here.
- Of the 39%, around 1 in 5 (21%) identified a more sophisticated attack such as denial of service, malware, or ransomware attack.
- Despite its low prevalence, organisations cited ransomware as a major threat, with 56% of organisations having a policy not to pay ransoms.
- Within the group of organisations reporting cyber attacks, 31% of businesses and 26% of charities estimate they were attacked at least once a week. One in five businesses (20%) and charities (19%) say they experienced a negative outcome as a direct consequence of a cyber attack, while one third of businesses (35%) and almost four in ten charities (38%) experienced at least one negative impact.
- Just over half of businesses (54%) have acted in the past 12 months to identify cyber security risks, including a range of actions, where security monitoring tools (35%) were the most common. Qualitative interviews however found that limited board understanding meant the risk was often passed on to; outsourced cyber providers, insurance companies, or an internal cyber colleague. Have you looked in to yours?
- Cyber-crime cost UK organisations an average of £4,200 in 2021. For just medium and large organisations, the number rises to £19,400.
- Between March 2020 to March 2022, there was a 57% increase in retail and consumer fraud.
- It is estimated that UK businesses lost around £736 million to cyber crime in 2021. Including consumers, as much as £2.5 billion may have been lost in 2021 to cyber criminals.
National Health Service (NHS) 2022 cyber-security breach:
On 4th August, Advanced, a key supplier of digital NHS services like patient check-ins and NHS 111, suffered a ransomware attack from an unknown hacking group.
The attack took several services offline, including software used by medical professionals for patient check-ins, patient records and NHS 111. GP practices suffered as access to important patient information was blocked, and notifications could not be electronically sent between hospitals and GPs.
In-person visits had to be recorded manually, extending wait times and piling extra work onto an already thinly stretched NHS workforce.
From August 22nd, NHS 111 services started to return to normal. Advanced worked on its security vulnerabilities and is restoring impacted services in a new, secure environment.
Cyber-attacks can happen at anytime, to anyone… to have a free no jargon chat with one of our experts, contact us today! We offer a FREE, no obligation to purchase security audit!
