Security

Working from home is the everyday normal for many across the UK, but just how prepared are UK businesses? The pandemic has opened opportunities for cyber attacks, with the number of scams on the rise. A new report by Fasthosts reveals that cyber criminals have identified remote workers as easy targets with two in five employees having not received any caution regarding COVID-19 scams whilst remote working or hand any video-call security training.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has seen an 18% rise in incidents of personal data loss, according to official figures. In total there were 546 reported incidents of potential data breaches in the most recent financial year, up from 463 in the previous year (2018/19). In addition to these figures, seven incidents were so serious they have been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for further investigation.

2020 saw a sharp contraction in the electronic security market size, though the focus on replacement sales has to some extent sheltered the market from the even steeper fall in new construction output. COVID-19 has even created a surge of interest in pandemic-related products such as thermal imaging to measure body temperature and analytics to monitor occupancy levels.

Today we try to safeguard our digital identity as much as our wallet and its contents. Our personal digital identity authorises us to go about our day-to-day - logging into our bank account to pay bills, checking our Facebook page for notifications or scheduling an UberEats delivery for dinner - but then there is our professional digital identity. Written by Juliette Rizkallah, CMO, SailPoint

Almost a third (28%) of UK businesses offer no cyber security training to reduce the likelihood and severity of data breaches while working from home, a new study reveals. The Cyber Security Insights Report from managed cloud services and security provider iomart asked workers about their businesses’ cyber security provisions, including the level of training offered, the extent of data backup policies in place, and their awareness of how to...

As much as 88% of data breaches are caused by human error, but only 43% of workers admit having made mistakes that compromised cyber security. In the past year a third of the breaches incorporated social engineering techniques and the cost of a breach caused by a human error averaged to $3.33 million. 

Joe Lomako, Business Development Manager (IoT) at TÜV SÜD, explains how to identify cyber weaknesses and mitigate against them.

PwC’s 2020 US Holiday Outlook indicates that 61% of those surveyed will do most of their shopping online, as 55% mentioned the pandemic being the biggest concern preparing for Christmas this year. Accenture provides similar estimations with 75% respondents claiming  they would at least partially shop for Christmas online. E-commerce vendors aim to grow their profits due to increased traffic in online stores, but this puts them in ...

Embedded security is now paramount. In a world where the adversaries have access to low-cost tools, seeking out vulnerabilities in your IoT device has become a routine event to improve security. In a remotely connected system, compromising a single target device gives the adversary potential access to the whole IoT deployment. By Mark Patrick, Mouser Electronics

Network attacks and unique attack signatures both hit two-year highs between July and September this year, according to the latest Internet Security Report from WatchGuard Technologies. Findings from the research show that attacks detected grew to more than 3.3 million, representing a 90% increase over the previous quarter.