According to a recent report by Kaspersky, industrial companies are the number one, most targeted sector for cyber criminals, with growth in requests for help from this sector increasing from 22% to 30.1% in the last year.

30% of attacks included encryption meaning ransomware is a high threat, but 75% of attacks within industrial companies involved data theft.

Netwrix’s 2022 Cloud Security Report found that over half of manufacturing companies had experienced an attack on their cloud infrastructure, with the push to support remote workers.

They also found that 75% of manufacturing companies have implemented multifactor authentication, leaving 25% which haven’t. If you were a criminal, which do you think it would be easier to breach?

So the risk is real and looks to be increasing but what can companies do, especially if the budget continues to tighten?

Top tips

- Join our business community. We’re free to join and you get monthly newsletters, bite sized practical guidance, sign posting to free services and tools as well as access to affordable services, if you need them. We’re a not-for-profit company, led by policing, with the aim to increase the cyber resilience of businesses. Join us today.

- Do the fundamentals. If you have no idea if your small business is good or bad already then have a look at the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Action Plan. Answer a few questions and you will be able to see if there are steps which you need to prioritise.

- Train your staff. Targeting staff remains the starting point of a cyber criminals attack. Making sure your staff are aware that they are on the front line and ensuring they know what to do, even if they do get caught, is essential. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. Consider layering free and paid-for services. The NCSC has free online staff awareness training, your local police protect officer can offer awareness sessions for small companies for free and the ECRC has affordable security awareness session which can be bespoke to your company. Find out more here.