According to the UK government’s “Cyber security breaches survey 2023”:
The most common cyber threats are relatively unsophisticated, so government guidance advises businesses and charities to protect themselves using a set of “cyber hygiene” measures.
Cyber hygiene is a reference to the practices and steps that users of computers and other devices take to maintain system health and improve online security. The most common cyber hygiene practices are:
- updated malware protection,
- cloud back-ups,
- passwords,
- restricted admin rights, and
- network firewalls
According to the “Cyber security breaches survey 2023”, a majority of businesses and charities have a broad range of these measures in place (each administered by two-thirds or more of businesses and half or more charities).
However, across the last three waves of the survey, some areas of cyber hygiene have seen consistent declines among businesses.
32% of businesses and 24% of charities overall recall any breaches or attacks from the last 12 months. Among those identifying any breaches or attacks, we estimate that the single most disruptive breach from the last 12 months cost each business, of any size, an average of approximately £1,100. For medium and large businesses, this was approximately £4,960. For charities, it was approximately £530.
That is a lot of money to lose, when it could be avoided by a few simple “Cyber hygiene” steps.
Don’t let your cyber hygiene slip!
The areas of cyber hygiene have seen consistent declines among businesses over the last 3 waves of the survey have been:
- use of password policies (79% in 2021, vs. 70% in 2023)
- use of network firewalls (78% in 2021 vs. 66% in 2023)
- restricting admin rights (75% in 2021, vs. 67% in 2023)
- policies to apply software security updates within 14 days (43% in 2021, vs. 31% in 2023).
These are all things that are really quite easy to put in place, not that time-consuming to plan or to execute, and are so worth the effort when you consider what you could lose by failing to do them.
Stay cyber hygienic!
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