FOR SMES , PHISHING ATTACKS

ARE LIKELY TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL AND HAVE A LARGER IMPACT THAN THEY ARE FOR LARGER ENTERPRISES .

Are there any particular industries that are facing more threats than others ?

From what I ’ ve seen , healthcare gets a lot of love and attention from cybercriminals . It ’ s unsurprising due to the amount of sensitive data pharmaceutical organisations hold , as well as places like GP practices . The technology used is also still fairly archaic – if a ransomware attack was to hit a GP surgery for example , that would easily take them completely offline and result in them not being able to help their patients .

Financial services are sometimes less of a target due to being tightly regulated , however , should a cybercriminal group be successful , the result would be more beneficial to them and that makes them a more appealing prize . Businesses such as accounting or legal firms carry a lot of desirable data . For example , solicitors handle huge sums of money for deposits or mortgages on a daily basis which , if intercepted , would be a big win for a hacker .

Despite that , no organisation or industry should assume they are any less vulnerable than others .

Do you see any trends in cybersecurity gaps amongst SMEs ?

A big security gap within the SME market is the reliance on third party IT and cybersecurity providers . Many SMEs do not have the resources required for in-house IT and security personnel so rely on external support .

While many third-party providers offer a positive experience for SMEs , the security of the supply chain and certain security practices are not what they should be . For example , many have RDP sessions running on the Internet which make it easy for small to medium-sized organisations to access what they need on their network and systems . However , the sessions are often not secure .

Large enterprises do face the same problem , but they have more security wrapped around

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