Strengthen user cybersecurity awareness to protect business finances

 

 

In a series of forthcoming articles and resources, Complete IT Systems and Kaspersky will be guiding your business through how to build your users’ cybersecurity awareness. The next article in the series focuses on how user awareness can affect business finances.

Human factors in cybersecurity

There are a lot of stats out there about cyberthreats – we recognise that. But specifically for small businesses in the UK, there are four in particular that should be noted:

  • 60% of employees have confidential data on their corporate devices (financial data, email database, etc.)
  • 30% of employees admit that they share their work PC’s login and password details with colleagues.
  • Last year, 43% of cyberattacks targeted small businesses
  • For SMBs, the average annual financial impact of data breaches caused by inappropriate IT resource usage by employees is around £75,000 ($98K). On top of this, the physical loss of company owned devices or media costs a further £80,000 ($105K).

Close to home

In other words, these aren’t random global statistics about data breaches targeting the likes of Google, Facebook or other household names. These are real data breaches happening to small and medium sized UK firms.

In fact, in the UK, the Information Commissioners’ Office reported that 88% of data breaches in the country over the past two years were caused by human error, rather than by hacker attacks*.

Take action – get your users clued up on cybersecurity

The stats show the harsh reality that, completely unwittingly, users are directly or indirectly responsible for the vast majority of company data breaches in the UK.

Read this guide from Kaspersky to start managing the human factor in your company’s cybersecurity strategy.

Want to find out more?

As Kaspersky Gold Partners, Complete IT Systems can offer you expert advice on the solutions and how they could be effectively deployed in your business.

To find out more or request a free trial, please call us on 01274 396 213 or use our contact form and we’ll arrange a good time to call you back.

References

“Sorting out a Digital Clutter”, Kaspersky, 2019.
“Measuring & Managing the Cyber Risks to Business Operations”, Ponemon Institute LLC, Dec 2018
“2019 Data Breach Investigations Report” Verizon
“On the Money: Growing IT Security Budgets to Protect Digital Transformation Initiatives”, Kaspersky, 2018