At a time of already spiralling business costs, that’s a hit few businesses can afford to ignore, especially as the report also found that the frequency of cyber-attacks in Ireland has increased by 26 per cent over the past year.
Not only are cyber criminals becoming more sophisticated, but employers are increasingly aware that attacks have been facilitated by the move to remote and hybrid working, with cyber criminals increasingly gaining access via cloud servers.More than three in five respondents, 62 per cent, believe their business is more vulnerable to attack as a result of working from home.
Having good risk management procedures in place, backed by cyber insurance, is the best way to protect your organisation, says Gallagher. Working from home also increases the likelihood of ‘CEO phishing’, where employees receive an email that looks like it comes from their boss asking them to, for example, change a supplier account number. “Again, because we’re working from home and the boss is too, we can’t check if it’s really from them. That has led to a big rise in claims,” says Gallagher.
Costs quickly add up. If you generate sales online, and your website is down, or compromised, your business will lose revenues immediately, he points out. In 2021 it introduced an online cyber maturity self-assessment model to help companies understand their cyber security strengths and weaknesses and benchmark against others.