Millions of UK SMEs face a compliance and cyber security crisis
The global cyber security and GDPR compliance platform, Naq Cyber, is teaming up with the national association for small businesses, The SME Club to alert the millions of small businesses forced online by the pandemic about a potential GDPR crisis and the threat posed by hackers online as new data shows only 10% of firms are currently covered.
Even more concerningly, 80% of small businesses in the UK think they aren’t of interest to cyber criminals and don’t believe they need to protect their businesses leaving them vulnerable to attack and even fines for GDPR issues. The true figures actually paints a very different picture as nearly two-thirds (61%) of SMEs in the UK had some form of cyber-attack in 2020 and one-in-six of these firms stated they almost went under as a result of these attacks.
Nadia Kadhim, CEO at Naq Cyber, commented, “Any UK business that has clients, employees or suppliers and especially if they have an online solution possess a wealth of personal information, but they don’t know what to do or where to start when it comes to securing that data.”
The lockdown measures have drastically increased the number of businesses working from home and this has caused cyber-crime targeting small businesses to rocket. Criminals are taking advantage of increased security vulnerabilities to steal data, generate profits and cause disruption.
The cyber experts at Naq Cyber have launched a one stop platform for small businesses to easily manage their cyber security and legal compliance essentially a small business information security officer.
James Godfrey, founder of The SME Club, added, “Millions of small businesses adapted amazingly to the pandemic and often this involved offering an online solution to their customers. For the vast majority of these SMEs, they haven’t considered the implications of holding all of this data and the issues around cyber security and GDPR compliance and we are calling on firms to address these issues before it has a negative impact on their business.”
Nadia Kadhim, added, “It is critical that small businesses start taking this seriously and consider investing in ongoing protection and advice in the same way they would hire an accountant to manage their accounts.
