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 we often don't 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 we want to get across here at the Cyber Resilience Centre.

A lot of the cyber crimes that our policing colleagues have witnessed and investigated when working in a Cyber Crime Unit are very hard to watch as things unfold for a business owner. Watching a small business that has lost everything due to cybercrime is horrendous. Mainly because we'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 them within their personal and working lives.

Throughout the last couple of years, we have seen many businesses, regardless of size, moving to a more flexible workforce away from the office. Working from home and ,remote working are seen as the norm, but this has brought out some extremely concerning threats to businesses and their employees.

Trends from the Government’s 2023 Cyber Security Breaches Survey

The Government’s 2023 Cyber Security Breaches Survey showed that of the 32% of businesses who have identified cybersecurity breaches or attacks in the last 12 months, 19% had to deal with attacks at least once a month.

Dealing with cyber attacks for such a sustained period will only 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 19% of businesses have had training or awareness-raising sessions on cyber security in the last 12 months), and just 52% of medium/large businesses have a formal cyber security strategy to support staff.

Giving your workforce the 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?

Employees who now work remotely on a permanent basis are being let down by businesses that aren't protecting staff as well as they could. Whilst we all have adopted a more flexible way of working, businesses must stay on course, ensure they have the right tools, and implement 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 implemented one!

Our ,Free membership also gives you the information to ensure 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, ,we are happy to talk to you about our affordable cybersecurity services.