Weak password sinks 158 year old company!

One password is believed to have been all it took for a ransomware gang to destroy a 158-year-old company and put 700 people out of work.

KNP - a Northamptonshire transport company - is just one of tens of thousands of UK businesses that have been hit by such attacks.

Read the full story here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gx28815wo

Thousands of UK businesses have already had their cyber security tested by criminals, not all have been forced to close, but it's not the way you want to test your defences!

Is your business at risk of becoming part of these statistics?

Big names like M&S, Coop, make the headlines, but it's estimated tens of thousands of UK businesses are equally as vulnerable and might not even know.

The emergence of "Ransomware-as-a-Service" means wannabe hackers don't necessarily need the technical know-how to conduct an attack, they simply pay to use powerful tools like Dragon Force to do the heavy lifting for them, and keep a share of the ransom for themselves.

Unfortunately, we see time and again businesses that do not take cyber security seriously until they are impacted by a breach. Sadly, as happened with KNP, they might not get a second chance.

Such is the danger now faced, that many cyber insurance providers now mandate network vulnerability testing, pen testing and cyber security accreditations as a requirement for businesses to take out a cyber insurance policy. Many businesses don't do any of this, rendering their policies worthless.

Of course, a valid insurance policy might cover some of the costs if you get hacked, but the disruption and reputational cost can be difficult and sometimes impossible to recover from.

But you can't fix a problem if you don't know it exists, so please don't lose sleep worrying about the unknown. Find out what vulnerabilities exist, so that they may be rectified before they are exploited.

We are passionate about protecting businesses from cyber security risks and will happily run a free vulnerability assessment, following up with a report on what vulnerabilities exist and providing a pathway to rectify them.