“Geoff. Hi. Tim in IT. I’m afraid we have been hacked. We need to pay them £500,000 by the end of the day or they say they are going to crash the business. What do we do?” The Real Story of Cyber Attacks & How to Stop YOU & Your Business Being the Next Victim.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a fourfold increase in cybersecurity complaints, whereas the global losses from cybercrime exceeded $1 trillion in 2020 alone.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2020” states that the chances of catching and prosecuting a cybercriminal are almost nil (0.05%). Given the circumstances, business awareness and resilience is key to securing sensitive data and avoiding breaches. Cyber threats are getting more sophisticated and intense amid the increasing levels of remote work and dependence on digital devices.

The subject title of this Beanstalk post is NOT factitious. That comment to a CEO from their IT team relates to a £50m annual turnover fresh food business in the UK that had been attacked with ransomware over this summer. The hackers had gained entry into their system some four months earlier. They had watched and picked up all of the email and data information they needed before deploying their ransomware and making their financial demands. The business paid the full blackmail demand on the same day as they had no option.

There is a view that 50% of food/fresh produce business in the UK alone have such poor housekeeping IT wise that they are as vulnerable to a very similar attack as per the example presented. How do you NOT become the next victim?

We have secured one of the UK’s experts in this area, David Smart – Managing Director of Softwerx to guide us through this significant issue to all of us.

David has spent a lifetime career in the IT sector and is old enough to remember when you had to walk inside computers to fix them! He has worked for a number of large corporate firms such as British Telecom, Willis Faber and Bull Information Systems, as well running a large offshore development team in Sri Lanka, but his specialism is building and growing smaller IT businesses to success or sale. David is the Managing Director of Softwerx, the UK’s leading Microsoft Cloud Security Practice. Softwerx provides managed cybersecurity services to a number of FTSE500 firms, as well as a large base of UK and European mid-market businesses.

To listen to the Broadcast just click on the link below. To listen to the Podcast just click the Podcast icon.

Filmed 14th September 2021.

Click HERE to check out the Softwerx website.  

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