Half of all businesses have reported a cyber breach in the last 12 months, and of those 44% went on to experience cyber crime. The Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024 also found that there were an estimated 7.78 million business cyber crimes of all types over the past year.

Worryingly, the report also found that since having a cyber breach, only 19% of businesses have given staff additional training or communications, only 18% have updated their firewall, and only 17% have updated or installed their anti-malware software.

DI Dan Giannasi, head of cyber and innovation at the NWCRC, urged businesses to focus on their cyber security in the wake of increasingly sophisticated attacks.

When an organisation has been a victim, they can often be targeted again by the same or

other groups. They may have only had a small breach, but the next one could completely take down their entire IT systems and customer data.

The new figures also show that more than half of businesses had experienced cyber breaches every month, and a third of businesses every week. These cyber breaches are likely to be phishing attempts - and 84% of all businesses questioned reporting experiencing phishing attempts. On top of this, the data found that 61% of businesses said that phishing was the most disruptive cyber breach.

We have a number of regional fully-funded programmes available for small to medium businesses, which encompass training and resources to help protect against cyber threats. The programmes are funded by the regional police forces and the Police and Crime Commissioners from proceeds of crime funding. Currently, there are free places available for businesses in Merseyside, Cheshire and Lancashire counties.