Written by FCSA Business Partners, Jelf
The recruitment, umbrella, payroll and accountancy sectors are not immune from cyber-criminal activity, and are open to huge costs and regulatory defence and penalty costs.
The British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) surveyed 1200 companies recently and they found that larger companies with over 100 staff were more likely to be attacked than smaller counterparts, with 42% of larger firms being victim of a cyber-attack compared with 18% of smaller ones.
However, businesses in general cannot be complacent, and BCC urged businesses to protect themselves, with only 25% of firms surveyed saying they had put security measures in place, to protect against hacking.
Umbrella companies and accountancy service providers will hold hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pieces of personally identifiable data, and the cost of a cyber-attack goes beyond monetary costs, but also businesses disruption and reputational impact on the company.
Huge household names like Yahoo, Talk Talk and Ebay, HSBC and Tesco Bank have fallen victims to major cyber-attacks and the cost runs into millions of pounds.
The Government has created a national, cyber security strategy supported by £1.9m of investment, to help businesses defend themselves against such cyber-attack. A new National Cyber Security Centre was opened in 2016.
The biggest risk to companies remains its people, and certainly more training and security measures are required.
If all else fails, Cyber Liability Insurance is available, which covers:
- Data breach notification costs
- IT/Telephony asset rectification costs
- Regulatory defence and penalty costs
- PR costs
- Forensic costs
- Credit monitoring costs
- Cyber Business Interruption
- Cyber Extortion
The cost is not prohibitive and should a quote be required, please contact :
Peter Stoll, Director at Jelf | Manson on tel: 0161 245 1215
