Don't be part of the 95% of cyber breaches that are caused by human error
For years, human error has been the Achilles' heel of cybersecurity, with 95% of all successful breaches being caused by user error and negligence, often caused by a lack of training or awareness.
This underscores the critical importance of cyber education, particularly for regulated and advice-based industries such as finance, where protecting sensitive client data, reducing risks, and maintaining trust, are key.
It’s likely that you already have a few protections in place, however you're not out of the woods yet. Small and mid-sized businesses remain prime targets for attackers due to the increasing amounts of data they handle, coupled with the lower cybersecurity controls in place compared with their larger counterparts.
Here’s how you can stay ahead:
1. Refresh cyber training regularly
Keep your team updated on the latest phishing and social engineering tactics. We find this resource quite useful to share with teams to help them identify common types of scams.
2. Foster a security-first culture
Ensure cybersecurity is part of day-to-day operations, not just an IT responsibility (especially if you primarily use an external IT support provider) and conduct annual simulated cyber events with staff members. It's also a good idea to generate some KPIs and add to board meetings so that it remains an important topic for discussion and improvement, which can also help with audits to demonstrate the proactive measures you have in place.
3. Reinforce best practices
Promote strong password management, multi-factor authentication, and secure handling of client data. As a useful guide, you can work towards implementing the recommendations from the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NSCS), which can be found here.
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We’ve seen remarkable results from clients who have implemented these measures. For instance, one of our financial advisory clients in London increased their awareness to phishing scams by over 70% following a series of short training sessions and some friendly reminder emails.
Your role in championing cybersecurity within your business is critical to staying ahead of threats. Let’s keep the momentum going. Education and vigilance have a massively positive impact to driving down the number of cyber incidents each year.
