Thousands of self-employed people were left financially stranded when two major payroll firms were hacked this month. Freelancers were left without pay after a cyber-attack stopped wages getting through from payroll firms Parasol and Brookson.

The companies manage self-employed clients' tax and wage pay outs in return for a fee, but their phone lines and website went down last week after "malicious activity" was spotted. It meant thousands of clients were left without cash or customer service support, as reported by Computer Weekly.

Cyber crime is a growing concern for all business and sole traders. The NEBRC has been established as a non-profit organisation to help protect those across the north east from online crime and fraud.

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Both Brookson and Parasol stress that no personal or financial information was accessed by the hackers. Brookson CEO Andrew Fahey has since apologised to customers in a LinkedIn post and a spokesperson said: "We are working with a team of IT experts to ensure we get back to normal operations as quickly as possible and we have informed the relevant authorities.

"We know that this disruption is causing understandable concern among Parasol employees, and we are very sorry for any inconvenience that has been caused. We have put in place contingency plans to ensure people continue to be paid.”

At the moment there are no laws or official schemes that force payment services or banks to provide compensation if customers are affected by hacks or outages.

Make it your business to be cyber aware. Contact a member of our team today at: enquiries@nebrcentre.co.uk