Week after week, Greater Manchester Police and the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit are seeing various cyber trends emerge and I want to share with you the consequences and impact of these trends.

The mental impact of dealing with a cyberattack as a victim is often overlooked

The financial impact is what many of us concentrate on, but I often see the raw physical and mental impact this type of crime can have on a person. Having something happen to your online business is more than just losing access to your business for some time. It has effects on all aspects of your business and life. The stress it often creates can be avoided in the first place and this is a message I really try and get across here at the Cyber Resilience Centre.

A lot of the cyber crimes I have witnessed and investigated when I worked in the Cyber Crime Unit and it’s very hard to watch things unfold. Watching a small business, who have lost everything as a result of cybercrime is horrendous. Mainly because I've seen that time and time again our communities could be protected against certain cybercrimes if they knew about basic ,cybersecurity guidance and how to implement it within their personal and working lives.

Throughout the pandemic and the last couple of years, we have seen many businesses regardless of size moving to be a more flexible workforce, away from the office. working from home and often exclusively online. This has brought out some extremely concerning threats to businesses and their employees.

Trends from the Government’s 2022 Cyber Security Breaches Survey

The Government’s 2022 Cyber Security Breaches Survey showed that of the 39% of businesses who have identified cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months, 31% were having to deal with attacks at least once a week.

Dealing with cyber attacks for such a sustained period of time is only going to negatively impact your mental health and eventually see your business succumb to some losses if the right security controls aren't in place.

The survey identified that businesses don't train staff (just 17% of businesses have had training or awareness-raising sessions on cyber security in the last 12 months) and just 23% of businesses have a formal cyber security strategy in place to support staff.

Giving your workforce freedom to work from home has so many benefits.

But you need to remember to ask yourself some key questions of any staff who are working remotely:

• Are you making sure your security is still as strong whilst they are at home?
• Are you using appropriate VPNs?
• Secure passwords on accounts?
• Or for ease are you giving too much access to your administration accounts?

If your business has had to move to deliver everything online using an eCommerce store,

• Have you secured that store?
• Have you ,secured your social media accounts?
• Has it got appropriate two-factor authentication (2FA) and recovery steps in place?

I am starting to see that employees who are working remotely on a permanent basis are being let down by some businesses who aren't protecting staff as well as they could be. We have all done an excellent job of responding to this new way of flexible working, but businesses need to stay on course and make sure they have the right tools and are implementing the right processes to stay secure in these difficult times.

What support can the Cyber Resilience Centre offer my business?

Our website is full of ,guidance to help get you started - don't forget to create your ,cyber incident plan if you've not already got one! Our ,Free membership also gives you starter information to make sure you are as secure as possible. People can sometimes be put off by technical information, Backups, VPNs, 2FA and encryption for example. These subjects are not going to go away and we want to help you tackle them and understand them!

If your business needs more assistance I am happy to talk to you about the affordable, cyber security services we deliver. I hope we can all work together to keep businesses safe going forward after the stresses of the last 2 years.