All sources agree that cyber crime is increasing year on year, putting businesses small and large at increasing risk. Attacks jumped by 31% during the height of the 2020 pandemic alone, and is predicted to cost the global economy over $10 trillion by 2025. In order to stay ahead of the hackers, savvy enterprises are stepping up their security scanning regimes by using vulnerability scanning and penetration tests to uncover security flaws.

As you may be aware, prior to the end of 2020 there was a lot of debate about what would happen to GDPR on 1st January. Given that the trade negotiations went down to the wire, we were all left in the dark until the deal was done on Christmas Eve. But what are the main headlines from this deal and, more importantly, what do they mean for UK businesses?

There’s no doubt that the internet has made almost every element of our lives easier. Virtually everything now has an online presence, from multi-national social media goliaths to your local bakery. Though this has its advantages, it also creates risk. Convenience comes at a cost, and all too often consumers and businesses alike don’t pay enough attention to cyber security until it’s too late.

At Bulletproof, we have a fantastic team who power our compliance services, which include GDPR, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, training, and act as our all-knowing outsourced Data Protection Officers. Both cyber security and data protection are crucial corporate responsibilities that we believe should be at the heart of any company’s day-to-day operations.

Now that 2021 is proving to not be the fresh start many hoped for, it’s time to re-examine the security lessons learnt in 2020. As the transformational business challenges of the last 12 months demonstrated, security should always be high on the agenda no matter what your organisation size. After all, as we revealed in our 2021 annual cyber security industry report, hackers don’t care what size or type of business you are – only if you’re an easy target.

The cyber attack unfolding in the US may turn out to be the most serious nation-state espionage campaign in history The Bulletproof SOC is actively monitoring the situation regarding SolarWinds and the Sunburst attack as with all new attacks. We do this to ensure we have a clear understanding of the potential threat to our customers and to build better innovative detection mechanisms, maintaining a prime position to support our customers as a true extension to their team.

It’s something of a cliché to say that hackers are shady types, often lurking in the shadows. Usually this is just a metaphor, though if you take stock imagery at face value, you’d be forgiven for thinking they only ever appear at night whilst wearing a hoodie. Like most clichés however, this contrivance does have an element of truth in it. The fact is that hackers often work just as hard to keep themselves and their tactics hidden as they do to find vulnerabilities to exploit.

2020 has been a quite the year for headline-grabbing data breaches thanks to a combination of record-breaking numbers and behind-the-hack tales. Despite huge investments in security tools and awareness, organisations of all sizes have struggled to fully protect their data from cyber criminals.

At Bulletproof, we know that different people learn in different ways. So when a healthcare provider came to us needing an innovative, engaging way of delivering security awareness training, we stood ready to deliver. The healthcare provider in question was St Andrews Healthcare – providers of specialist care for people with challenging mental health needs. Being a company that works with vulnerable individuals, staff awareness of cyber security is essential.