The UK official National Cyber Security Centre – a part of GCHQ – has unveiled two new services aimed at UK small businesses: Cyber Action Plan, and Check Your Cyber Security tools.
Lindy Cameron, NCSC CEO said: “Small businesses are the backbone of the UK, but we know that cyber criminals continue to view them as targets. That’s why the NCSC has created the Cyber Action Plan and Check Your Cyber Security to help them boost their online defences in a matter of minutes.
“I strongly encourage all small businesses to use these tools today to keep the cyber criminals out and their operations on track.”
The Cyber Action Plan can be completed online in five minutes and results in advice for businesses on how they can improve their cyber security; while Check your Cyber Security – which is accessible via the Plan – can be used by any small organisation including schools and charities, for non-tech users to identify and fix cyber issues.
Comment
Laurence O’Toole, Cyber Security Manager, CYFOR Secure said: “It’s hugely promising to see greater focus being given to the security of smaller businesses by the NCSC. SMEs make up 99.9% of the UK business population and are regular targets for cybercriminals, yet far too often we hear from small business leaders who believed they were exempt from cyberattacks because of the size of their company. In reality, threat actors recognise that smaller teams will have less resource and budget to secure their assets and may be more willing to pay smaller ransoms to regain access to their data. These attacks won’t bring in big earnings for criminals, but they will be reliable sources of income in-between the larger, more complex exploits of global enterprises.
“It can be incredibly daunting for SMEs without sufficient in-house resource for cybersecurity to know where to start. Many simply don’t know what they don’t know, so the NCSC ‘Check your cyber security’ service is a great place to begin. The next step for businesses is to audit everything that is currently in place to get an accurate view of their biggest vulnerabilities, locations of their most sensitive data, and the most critical steps that need to be taken to protect their network. A cybersecurity audit can be a relatively inexpensive task and will give small businesses a better idea of where their central risks lie.”
