Small firms face attack of the Cybermen

They were humanoids that came from the planet Mondas. To preserve themselves, they implanted artificial parts into their bodies.

This led to the Cybermen becoming Spock-like in that they were cold, logical, calculating and devoid of emotion.

Although they were scary, they didn’t seem to have much relevance to our own world.

But that may be changing as we learn that probably the greatest risk for many small businesses is a cyber security attack.

The Cybermen are after us.

According to the IT security firm Symantec’s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report (https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/istr-21-2016-en.pdf), phishing campaigns targeted small businesses 43 per cent of the time.

What is phishing? It’s sending emails claiming to be from reputable companies in order to get people to hand over their personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers, online.

This is just one way that wrongdoers can disrupt your business. It is an increasing risk and one that every business needs to take very seriously. One in four businesses reported a cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months (Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2016, Department for Culture, Media & Sport).

I spoke to someone recently at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Government department responsible for cyber security.

I mentioned that I had spoken to a business that had hired an organisation to hack into their systems to see how robust their systems were.

It had taken just 20 minutes. The response from the official was that the business must have hired an organisation that wasn’t very good at its job – it normally would have taken much less time!

The Government has various initiatives that are worth looking at (the worth might be equivalent to the value of your entire business).

There are the 10 Steps to Cyber Security, the Cyber Aware Campaign and the Cyber Essentials Scheme to name three.

All of these are essential reading because of the terrible impact a security breach can have on your business. And reading must be turned into action.

As a means of ensuring that businesses protect themselves adequately there are new laws coming into force.

There is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation that will apply to medium-sized businesses with 250 employees or more.

The penalties for breaching this law will be significant at €20m or 4 per cent of annual turnover, whichever is the higher.

If companies of that size face such stiff fines then they are bound to want to ensure that their suppliers, consultants and advisers have robust processes which protect them. So that’s small businesses too.

This is not another reel of redtape in prospect.

It is a way to encourage firms to take care of themselves.

The Cybermen were cold, logical, calculating and devoid of emotion.

Cyber security attacks are the same.

And we cannot rely on Doctor Who to protect us from this new version of the Cybermen.

Anyway he’s probably gone phishing.