This conclusion was drawn from a survey of 400 senior security managers, conducted by the cyber security company, Thales. Not only that, the survey also revealed that security breaches in general have increased from just 22% of respondents saying they were breached, to 37% in 2017. This is set to grow further again in 2018 as a result of the recent GDPR.

So with the UK clearly struggling with cyber security, we thought we’d take a look at some of the biggest barriers to UK businesses.

One thing’s for sure, there’s no lack of information around the issue of cyber security and what you should be doing about it. So it’s not a lack of education at a high level that’s causing UK businesses to be breached more than others, (although there does seem to be a lack of education and training across the whole of an organisation).

The Thale report found that respondents clearly recognised the cyber security defences available and not only that, but they were also capable of differentiating between which of these defences were most effective. 

The trouble is, that while most respondents in the survey knew that data-at-rest services such as encryption are rated the most effective at protecting vast volumes of data for example, these types of security tools were not rated highly on the agenda for security budgets, with more businesses focussing on endpoint protection and network protection.

So if we know what the best cyber security options are, why aren’t we spending our security budgets on getting them implemented?

The problem seems to be with how vulnerable we feel about data threats actually affecting us. While 37% of UK respondents admitted to suffering a security breach in 2017 only 31% of UK organisations felt either vulnerable or extremely vulnerable to data threats. In fact, 69% of UK respondents reported feeling only somewhat vulnerable or not vulnerable at all!

This demonstrates that there is a great disconnect between the reality of how secure UK businesses are from a cyber security and data protection point of view, and how threatened we feel. In other words, UK businesses feel more secure than they actually are, and that’s a big problem.

This feeling of complacency for a data threat or cyber security breach means UK businesses are resting on their laurels instead of investing more money in cyber security solutions.

If you think you’re fully prepared for a cyber-attack, why not test your defences and make sure your security is up to scratch? If you know your cyber security needs work, then talk to our in-house experts today.

The UK has already fallen victim to some major cyber security attacks over the last 12 – 18 months, so the threat is real and cyber security is important.