HE CYBERATTACK THREAT

Ballard went on to say that what ’ s clear is that a lot of UK businesses do not have an integrated plan when it comes to security for remote working . While it is a lot of work , an infrastructure plan needs to be built around it , enabling companies to work on people ’ s existing home hardware and ensure that whatever is coming through is secure .

David Ballard , Director at UK Wi-Fi specialist consultancy ,

Performance Networks

To put that into greater context , that number means more than 4,400,000 registered companies were targeted at some point over the last 12 months in the UK . That ’ s not all .

The same report highlights that IT managers across the UK only spend 11.3 % of their budget on security , while a survey recorded between October 2021 and January 2022 showed that 36 % of businesses that suffered a cybersecurity breach took no action at all .

According to David Ballard , Director at UK Wi-Fi specialist consultancy , Performance Networks , it ’ s high time that businesses prioritised implementing more stringent security IT strategies to combat the growing threat .

He said : “ The reality is that businesses are easier to target than ever before . Remote working , which was forced upon us by the COVID-19 pandemic and then adopted permanently by millions of companies across multiple sectors , is leaving our networks exposed more than ever before .

“ When the pandemic hit , while agility was embraced to quickly enable home / remote working , there wasn ’ t , in most cases , the time to really look into the security when working from home – or a co-working space for that matter . This remains an issue even now for most companies .

There are different standards of security within Wi-Fi . Remote working has made it all too easy for hackers to break the security lines , mainly because so many remote workers do not have enterprise-grade security in place .

Ballard said : “ With security comes complexity and the set-up of that , generally , is seen as too complicated for the home environment . How that gets addressed is becoming more and more important but there are simple solutions that businesses can implement to get around this issue .

“ Though it comes with a high price point , businesses could implement an all-in-one enterprise grade firewall / router / Virtual Private Network ( VPN ) endpoint / access point and centrally manage the configuration so it is uniform across the company .

“ A cheaper option would be to implement software VPN clients on the user ’ s laptops with two factor authentication and limit admin-level access , then advise on best practice home Wi-Fi setup , which includes minimum passwords and not using old encryption methods ( WEP etc ).

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