Ransomware, Phishing and other Malware Archives - Page 5 of 8

Cyber Security and The SME

What are we facing?

The world is in somewhat of a flux at the moment and SMEs are being battered from all sides it seems. First, we have the increase in the minimum wage, which impacts SMEs, generally, more than the corporate sized businesses, and then the increase in NI. What we didn’t need was tariffs, although how much of an impact that will have on SMEs won’t be known for some time yet. The EU is the world’s largest single market area and is the largest economy in the world, whether some people agree or not. Many may attribute that market size to large organisations and multi-national companies. While these are important contributors to the overall EU economy, the Small Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses form the backbone of that economy. This is also true of the UK where the DTI estimates that SMEs make up nearly 95% of the UKs GDP. A huge percentage and one that might surprise you.

According to the Cyber Security Breaches Survey (gov.uk), half of SMEs in the UK had experienced some form of cyber-attack in 2024, with email phishing, spear-phishing, and social engineering continue to trend as the most common and reliable means of illegally accessing a network.

NinjaOne produced are report which says that there were 7.78 million Cyber Attacks on UK Businesses in 2024. More than 400,000 cases of fraud and computer misuse were recorded. 50% of UK businesses experienced a cyber-attack.

The economic effects of the measures hitting SMEs discussed above, are already having an effect in that many SMEs are putting enhancing their protections against cyber-attacks, on the back burner. Those we speak to acknowledge the problem but are reluctant to spend money on anything that isn’t their core business. And we get that, we really do. After all we are an SME ourselves.

What are the potential impacts of a cyber-attack on your business?

A successful cyber-attack can wreak havoc on your business. Damaging your financial stability, customer trust, and reputation while inviting legal issues. The fallout includes:

Loss of corporate, financial, and personal data
Disruption to trading and potential fines from ICO
Repair costs for affected systems
Imagine building customer trust and an impeccable reputation over years, only to see it shatter in hours due to a cyber-attack.
The consequences, loss of customers and decreased sales and profits

The fear of legal repercussions is real too. Deploying inadequate security measures can lead to fines, regulatory sanctions and even legal action.

So, what can you do to better protect your business?

Despite today’s digital landscape, cyber security remains a non-negotiable aspect of business success. The threats are real, and SMEs are not immune. In fact, they’re often the most vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Solutions need not be complicated or expensive, yet many SME owners still act reactively, not proactively, to cyber threats. The result? Huge costs to put things right and a massive hit on the company’s reputation and trust with their customers.

An underlying issue common to all SMEs is management awareness and commitment, which in turn drives budget, allocation of resources and effective implementation of the cybersecurity practices. Six categories of major challenges for SMEs have been identified:

Low cybersecurity awareness of the personnel.
Inadequate protection of critical and sensitive information.
Lack of budget.
Lack of ICT cybersecurity specialists.
Lack of suitable cybersecurity guidelines specific to SMEs.
Low management support.

Risk Management

Now I know that many will say that this is a technical matter and that we have a company under contract that looks after our IT infrastructure and therefore we can safely leave it to them. Wrong. Ask them some simple questions:

Have they fully identified your security assets? Security assets are not just hardware and software, in fact those are often the least of your worries. It’s the data, where it is and how it’s protected that is important.
Have they done a risk assessment on those assets.
Have they recommended or implemented controls to manage the risk down to your acceptable residual risk level. That is assuming they have spoken to you about what that acceptable risk is.

It’s very important that business owners grasp the difference between the technical requirements of their networks, and the business requirement.

You carry out risk management on a daily basis as you go about your business. Cyber security is no different and a simple risk management process can save you money by targeting your limited spend where it really needs to go, not where you may think it needs to go. Here is a link to a short video on that risk management process, which should help you see that it’s not onerous and need not be costly.

https://bit.ly/3FdZ6x0

Cyber Awareness Training

Some of you who are amongst my regular readers, will be quite aware of my mantra in regard to Cyber Awareness Training for staff and managers. A big misconception is that because cyber security can be an issue connected to technical measures, it lies squarely within the realm of IT. Wrong. Cyber security needs to be part of the culture of the organisation, second nature to all. Staff need a basic awareness and how their attitude and actions can have a damaging effect on the business. A report for ENISA, the EU security agency, suggests that 84% of Cyber attacks rely on some form of social engineering, and that the number of phishing attacks within the EU continues to grow. This is echoed in the UK.

Budgets

Budgets remain a problem. Many SMEs are low margin organisations, heavily reliant on cash flow, and therefore reluctant to spend on things that are not connected to their core business. But they must get used to asking themselves, ‘Is IT part of my core business?’, and ‘how long could I continue to operate my business if I lost my IT systems?’. Cyber security needs to be factored into budgets. Cyber security is an iterative process, it isn’t something that needs to be done once and then forgotten about. The criminals are constantly evolving, and defences must evolve with them.

Cyber Expertise

Cyber security expertise is something that isn’t cheap and easy to obtain. Many IT companies will talk about their expertise in this area but if you delve into that, it is generally focused on products, mainly firewalls and anti-malware. Cyber security expertise goes much much deeper than that and is as much procedural as it is technical. It starts with risk management, understanding the risks you face, which in turn is derived from threat and vulnerability analysis, matched to your cyber security assets. Those latter are not necessarily hardware and software but can be much wider ranging than that. Typically, the type of person who can legitimately call themselves experts in this field, can command salaries north of £80K. I doubt there are many SMEs prepared to pay that, or indeed, many of the smaller IT companies.

Security Standards

It can also be advantageous to follow a standard. By far the most comprehensive is the International Standard for Cyber Security, ISO27000 series. However, this might be seen as a little heavy for many SMEs, although at the higher end, they may want to follow it, rather than seek certification. At the lower end the UK Cyber Essentials scheme, mandated for anyone wishing to do business with the public sector, is very suitable, inexpensive, and obtainable.

Cloud Services

More and more SMEs are now moving to a cloud environment. Be it MS365, Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, amongst others. I usually recommend that SMEs take this approach as it can solve a lot of problems, particular with home working still very much in vogue. However, it is not the panacea that most think it is and still has some security issues, usually but not always at the user end, that need to be addressed.

About H2

Here at H2 we use our long experience of providing cyber security solutions to the large enterprises, to craft solutions for the SME community, having first identified the issues that the business faces. We take an approach that looks at things from the business point of view, managing risk and coming up with cost effective solutions which can be brought in in a phased way, for a subscription price. No large bills to damage that all important cash flow.

Cyber Security is a Business Issue

I know that I tend to include the statement in the title, in many articles and posts that I produce, but I haven’t really expanded on it and explained in more detail why I say that this is a business issue and one that owners and boards need to fully embrace if they are to stay safe.

We still see many ‘tick in the box’ exercises happening when we talk to SMEs, particularly when they have encountered an issue and tell us that they have taken precautions which, when examined, aren’t doing what the company thought, or perhaps hoped, they were doing. Compliance and auditable solutions need to underpin what precautions you are taking. If you can’t check and make sure that everything is up to scratch, and do it easily and often, then you have wasted your money.

Far too much money is spent on one size fits all solutions and those that are reactive to one off threats, which produces a firefighter mentality that is at odds with the holistic preventive protection that is required to combat the current and emerging threat landscape.

This is not just a technical issue

A great quote which I use a lot comes from Bruce Schneier, an American scientist and

information security thought leader. He says:

If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don’t understand the problems and you don’t understand the technology.

And there’s a lot of truth in that statement, particularly when it comes to SMEs, simply because they don’t understand the technology, and leave it to the IT management company that looks after their network, who mainly focus on technology, because that’s their comfort zone and selling licenses is a big part of their business. And neither the SME nor the IT Management company have a handle on the emerging threat landscape.

Another good quote comes from the Chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. He says, ‘If boards do not give cybersecurity and cyber resilience sufficient priority, this creates a foreseeable risk of harm to the company and thereby exposes the directors to potential enforcement action by [insert here your regions governance requirements] based on the directors not acting with reasonable care and diligence.’

Cyber security needs to be flexible and adaptable to the changing threats as they occur, because once they have become prevalent, it’s often too late to play catchup. This means a holistic strategy that encompasses technology but also process, personnel, compliance and audit. Don’t be complacent. If you stand still, you will as they say, come a cropper.

Keep saying – PEOPLE, PROCESS and TECHNOLOGY – in that order.

Is there a Misleading Message Coming from the Technology Industry?

Perhaps, because there is a considerable amount of what we call FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt, doing the rounds constantly. It concentrates people on thinking about specifics, instead of looking at the bigger picture. Whilst there is no doubt that phishing, ransomware, and other scams have certainly concentrated the mind somewhat, and these attacks are most definitely not confined to the large enterprise businesses, but have been attacking, with a lot of success, the small to medium business market, this causes vendors to try and exploit the issues around that and push their technology solutions and of course, SMEs rarely, if ever, have the expertise to judge whether or not a particular product will actually give them the protection they need. We now must add into the mix AI and its capacity for increasing cyber-attacks at all levels, making the production of malicious code so much easier and making it available to those perhaps less skilled than heretofore.

Another problem is that the advertising tends to give the impression that Cyber security is something new when in fact it’s just an evolution of the physical security issues that existed when information was all on paper. Think of it like that and you’ll realise that it’s been around for a very long time and that what you are trying to protect is information of all kinds. It’s information that makes your business work efficiently. The very word Cyber brings with it the illusion that it’s something modern and/or futuristic, when in fact that word is essentially meaningless and the old description of Information Security or Infosec, is far more accurate and descriptive. Cyber is a blatant attempt to push the technological aspect of information security.

Risk Management

I’m going to slip in a link to a short video on risk management as it pertains to Cyber (yes, I’m using that word because it’s sadly become de facto). This video describes the process at a high level.

https://bit.ly/3FdZ6x0

Technology can be an essential part of your protection, but it must be targeted in the right way, which not only means you have the right piece of kit doing the right thing, but that you are targeting your IT spend to support your business goals and give a maximum return on investment (ROI). It should also be married to good policies and processes that are enforceable and auditable and fully understood by your work force. To do this you have to understand exactly what your risks, vulnerabilities and threats are to ensure that your solution to those risks, vulnerabilities, and threats, is targeted for maximum effect and ROI and that the technology is supporting the policies and processes, all of which is underpinned with good security awareness training.

It’s also necessary to have some way of measuring the effectiveness of your solutions through a monitoring or auditing solution. Such solutions for SMEs have long been considered too expensive to even consider but that is no longer the case and affordable solutions are now on the market.

We must all grasp that these risks are owned by the board, and if you don’t have a formal board, then the management team. This needs to be understood fully by those at the top. They team need to understand what level of risk is acceptable and agree what risks they are prepared to tolerate to achieve the business aims. They need to ensure that supporting policies are produced, implemented, understood by employees, and regularly reviewed and updated. At H2 we tend to produce an information security and data protection handbook which can run into many pages. Producing these policies is not as easy as it sounds.

You may also wish to look at some recognised standards by which you can regulate your risk management. One such is the international standard for information security, ISO 27000 series but perhaps the most appropriate for SMEs is the Cyber Essentials Scheme which will help you demonstrate an appropriate level of information security and risk management within your company.

Once you have a risk management framework in place, owned from the top, then you can identify your information assets and assess the risk to your business should those assets be compromised in some way. Then and only then can you adequately assess what processes and technologies you need to mitigate the risks identified for each asset thus targeting your spend for maximum effectiveness.

Sadly, that’s not the end. User education is probably the most important element of all for SMEs. Ensuring that your staff are aware of the policies and why they exist. Protect yourself against scams which sadly, form the biggest danger to SMEs rather than hacks. Scams can be very low tech or high tech using malware, but however they come in, your staff need to be aware of them.

Social Engineering

I frequently share insights on the significance of Cyber Awareness Training and its critical role in helping organisations defend against cybercrime. Cyber awareness training is a vital aspect of contemporary security strategies for everyone. It provides employees with the essential knowledge and skills needed to identify, respond to, and reduce cyber threats. This training is particularly effective in combating social engineering.

While many people are now familiar with the term social engineering, they may not fully understand its meaning. In the context of cybersecurity, social engineering involves manipulating, influencing, or deceiving individuals to gain unauthorised access to IT systems or to steal personal and financial information. It employs psychological tricks to lead users into making security errors or divulging sensitive data. The most prevalent form of social engineering is phishing.

Social engineering heavily relies on the six Principles of Influence identified by Robert Cialdini, a behavioral psychologist and author of “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” These six principles are: Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, and Scarcity. Simply put, what these criminals seek is information, login credentials, passwords, names, phone numbers, and more. They are profiling your organisation to identify vulnerabilities, such as who manages accounts payable or whether you have an IT support company under contract that they could impersonate. In addition to phishing, they utilise various forms including vishing (voice phishing), smishing (SMS phishing), and simply calling to ask questions.

A rising threat that criminals are increasingly adopting is help desk social engineering tactics. In these schemes, attackers call an organisation’s IT help desk while posing as a legitimate employee, trying to convince the help desk agent to reset passwords or multi-factor authentication (MFA) for a specific account.

In recent years, this technique has been used to access single sign-on (SSO) accounts and cloud-based application suites. Multiple criminals adopted this approach in 2024, targeting academic and healthcare institutions; in these cases, attackers utilised compromised identities to extract data from cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) applications or alter employee payroll information.

IT help desks typically require employees requesting password and MFA resets to provide their full name, date of birth, employee ID, and manager’s name or answer a pre-set security question. However, cybercriminals attempting to socially engineer help desk personnel often answer these questions accurately. Much of this information is not confidential and can be found in public resources and social media sites. The dark web frequently harbours data that should remain private. At H2, we continuously scan the dark web for our clients to uncover any exposed information.

Often, help desk social engineering calls occur outside of regular working hours. This tactic allows criminals to maintain access to compromised accounts for longer periods before the legitimate account owner detects any suspicious activity. Attackers using this method may register their own devices for MFA to secure ongoing access to compromised accounts. They also frequently delete emails from compromised mailboxes related to suspicious account activities or configure mail transport rules to redirect relevant emails away from the main inbox.

Over the past year, several criminals have openly sought callers on popular forums. Advertisements typically call for English-speaking individuals familiar with RMM tools and experienced in conducting remote sessions. Some criminals are also exploring effective ways to spoof phone numbers or encrypt calls, ensuring caller IDs appear more credible. This trend suggests that phone-related social engineering will pose a significant threat in 2025 as demand for these capabilities increases.

So how can we combat this? I began with cyber awareness training, and I’ll conclude with it as well. When your staff, regardless of their technical expertise, understand what social engineering is and its intentions, they are much more likely to recognise it when it occurs. Simple practices such as asking unknown callers to call back using a verified number instead of one provided by the caller can make a difference. If you receive an email from a senior manager or board member that seems suspicious, open a new email thread for confirmation rather than replying directly, this helps avoid potential spoofing by scammers masquerading as legitimate sources. And of course, never click on links!

Cyber awareness training doesn’t need to be costly; it can be delivered face-to-face, online, or through automated means. At H2, we offer all these options! Regardless of your choice, please consider this training an essential component of your strategy.

DATA BREACHES

Data breaches continue to make headlines, with corporate incidents grabbing the most attention. A prime example is the Equifax breach, where a server exploit compromised credit reports of over 140 million individuals. The breach took months to discover and resolve, ultimately resulting in Equifax settling with the FTC for a $575 million fine.

Not so long ago the Electoral Commission revealed it fell victim to a “complex cyber-attack,” potentially impacting millions of voters. Unspecified “hostile actors” accessed electoral registers from August 2021 and infiltrated emails and control systems. Alarmingly, this attack went undetected until the following October, leaving sensitive data exposed to cyber criminals for over a year. It’s astonishing that adequate protections were not in place to ensure timely detection and management of the breach.

According to the UK’s NCSC, half of businesses and about a third of charities have reported experiencing some form of cyber security breach or attack. This figure rises to approximately 70% for medium-sized businesses and 74% for large enterprises. Phishing remains a favoured attack method due to its relative simplicity, with AI now generating new variations of old scams.

Most data breaches occur unintentionally, often due to employees making mistakes because they lack awareness of proper procedures. Who bears responsibility? Is it the employee or the employer for not providing sufficient cyber awareness training? That’s open to interpretation.

Here are some notable examples from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

• A data controller inadvertently sent paperwork to a child’s birth parents without redacting the adoptive parents’ names and addresses. Upon discovering the breach, the data controller failed to inform the adoptive parents.

• A debt insolvency agent mistakenly emailed a vulnerable new client’s file to a colleague in another department. The colleague quickly deleted the email and alerted the sender about the mistake.

• An employee misplaced his briefcase containing work on an unencrypted laptop and unredacted paper files related to a sensitive court case, which included information on criminal convictions and health details. Initially, he believed both the laptop was encrypted and that the paper files were redacted. After informing his manager, who reported it to IT, the laptop was remotely wiped without initially notifying the ICO. The data controller later reported it after realising the laptop was unencrypted.

• A courier mistakenly delivered medication intended for one patient (Patient A) to another (Patient B). After Patient A complained, the pharmacist recognised the error and arranged for the unopened medication to be picked up and delivered correctly.

• A law firm employee fell victim to a phishing attack after clicking on a link in an email that led them to enter login credentials on what they thought was a legitimate site. The IT department later discovered that their email account had been compromised, leading to significant unauthorised payments being made by clients due to spoofed communications.

These cases are just a small sampling.

Now let’s discuss ransomware. There’s a common misconception among SME management that ransomware primarily targets larger companies since SMEs seem too small to be lucrative targets for cybercriminals. However, when SMEs do get attacked, ransom demands can be surprisingly low—often between £500 and £1,000—leading many SMEs to pay up without hesitation. This poses significant risks because often their data has already been stolen, and sometimes criminals fail to restore access afterward, leaving SMEs financially strained and unable to operate.

Preventing such attacks in the first place is far more advantageous. Here are several strategies you might consider implementing:

• One of the most impactful steps an SME can take is providing Cyber Awareness Training for employees. Research shows that 90% of data breaches stem from human error; it’s unlikely an employee will intentionally harm your business. However, without proper training, they may unknowingly engage in risky behaviour. Cyber security awareness training is crucial; staff need knowledge about potential threats. Cyber security is not just an IT issue; it’s a business-wide responsibility that requires everyone’s involvement. Effective strategies tend to follow the KISS principle—Keep It Simple Stupid.

• Another cost-effective measure is developing robust policies and procedures related to cyber security that are communicated throughout your organisation and regularly updated to remain relevant. Providing employees with clear guidelines on how to respond if they suspect suspicious activity supports them rather than penalising them for mistakes. Many SMEs lack adequate policies or settle for generic templates found online that seldom meet their needs.

• Review your backup strategy as well. Even if using cloud-based services, your data may not be adequately secured, despite providers’ claims. A better approach would be implementing a backup strategy where your data is backed up nightly onto magnetic media storage that’s stored securely offline. In case of an attack that locks your data, you could wipe affected workstations and restore information from backups without significant downtime.

• EMail remains one of the most common attack vectors. Numerous products claim to block malicious emails effectively; many excel at this task. For SMEs, cost is often a deciding factor when selecting these products. Unfortunately, some still opt for low-cost or free anti-malware solutions. Understanding that quality correlates with price is essential; if it’s free, you’re likely facing issues down the line.

Turning to how your systems might be monitored for security issues, we have been exploring options in the market for an affordable security managed service tailored specifically for SMEs and we believe we have found it! Our solution emphasises simplicity while utilising enterprise-grade technology to streamline daily operations effectively. Our unified platform seamlessly detects, prevents, and responds holistically to cyber threats without hassle or excessive costs.

We are offering a free trial that includes:

a. Email security.

b. Cloud data protection.

c. Automated cyber awareness training.

d. External risk assessment.

e. Endpoint security.

f. Secure browsing practices.

g. Phishing simulations.

h. Plus, as an added bonus: cyber insurance priced based on your risk score within our system—the lower your risk score, the more affordable your insurance!

This service is specifically designed for businesses with 1-250 IT users; while most SMEs typically fall between 10-15 users, we’re flexible! It’s a managed service approach with proactive risk mitigation tailored according to your preferences—all at just £12 per user per month!

We’re also introducing an intuitive cloud software solution focused on data protection that empowers organisations by securing their information while giving IT professionals an easy way to track sensitive data and manage risks effectively. The system routinely audits company data to locate sensitive information and applies necessary updates and encryption automatically.

This method ensures organisations always know what sensitive data they possess while keeping it secure through automatic encryption measures, making data security straightforward so businesses can protect private information as circumstances evolve over time, without needing complex software requiring specialised expertise.

Here are 2 very short videos explaining our solutions.

Why Your Business Needs Protective Monitoring – https://bit.ly/3Qy4u0x

Mastering GDPR Compliance: Safeguarding Your Company – https://bit.ly/4berDPa

Cyber Security Operations

Security operations is a complex subject and there is no doubt that it can be expensive and difficult, even for corporate organisations who generally have the resource, both financial and technical, to run a security operations centre (SOC), or at least can afford to outsource. I saw an RFP from a housing society for a SOC and I would be very interested to see if that contract gets let once the organisation gets the quotes, because I would be shocked if they could afford it.

Their RFP based its premise on the introduction of a Security Information and Event Management system (SIEM), which.in itself, might suggest that they don’t really know what they are asking for, or indeed, what they want. I base this on having designed, built and operated several such operations centres in the past.

Now before the SIEM vendors and resellers pile on, let’s be clear, SIEM systems have their place and are very useful in a SOC, although I would argue that they are most certainly not the end all and be all. My focus these days is on SMEs and for an SME there are several reasons why a SOC and an SIEM may be over the top and a cost too far.

Whilst an SIEM system is a valuable tool for cybersecurity, it comes with several drawbacks, including:

a. High Cost

Expensive Implementation – SIEM systems require significant upfront costs for software, hardware, and licensing.
Ongoing Costs – Maintenance, updates, and skilled personnel add to long-term expenses.

b. Complex Deployment and Management

Difficult Configuration – Setting up a SIEM system to work effectively requires extensive tuning and integration with various security tools.
Frequent Fine-Tuning – To avoid false positives and negatives, organisations must continuously refine alert rules and correlation policies.

c. High Volume of Alerts and False Positives

Alert Fatigue – SIEM systems generate numerous alerts, many of which are false positives, overwhelming security teams.
Difficult Prioritisation – It can be challenging to distinguish between critical threats and routine events without proper tuning.

d. Scalability Issues

Performance Bottlenecks – As an organisation grows, more logs and data sources can slow down the system.
Expensive Scaling – Scaling a SIEM to handle increasing data volumes often requires costly upgrades.

e. Need for Skilled Personnel

Expertise Required – SIEM systems need cybersecurity professionals to manage, analyse, and fine-tune them effectively.
Shortage of Talent – Finding skilled SIEM analysts can be challenging and expensive.

f. Storage and Compliance Challenges

Log Retention Costs – Storing large volumes of logs for compliance can be expensive.
Regulatory Complexity – Ensuring compliance with data protection laws (e.g., GDPR) requires careful log management.

h. Limited Threat Detection Without AI/Automation

Reactive Approach – Many traditional SIEMs rely on pre-set rules, making them less effective against new or sophisticated threats.
Lack of Automation – Without AI-driven analytics, manual investigation can be time-consuming.

Having debunked the usefulness of an SIEM system for an SME, let’s look at what an SME could do to mitigate their cyber risks.

A good cyber security strategy has always been founded upon strength in depth. Sound security architecture, good cyber awareness training, solid access control and identity management, and the ability to protectively monitor your estate for threats, vulnerabilities, and risks.

If you are not monitoring the effectiveness of the protections that you have spent good money on, how do you know it’s money well spent? Are those protections doing what you think they are? Monitoring is central to the identification and detection of threats to your IT systems. It acts as your eyes and ears when detecting and recovering from security incidents and it enables you to ensure that devices are used in accordance with your organisational policies.

Many small to medium-sized businesses struggle with stretched resources, lean budgets, and a critical technical expertise gap. This fight against sophisticated cyber threats and outdated systems turns them into easy targets for cybercriminals. Exposed and at risk, these businesses stagger on the edge of significant disruption, financial loss, and reputational damage. Although on the surface an SIEM system might seem to be what an SME needs, it would not fit the profile of most SMEs, being too resource intensive and costly.

We have been researching the market, looking for a way of providing a security managed service that would serve an SME, at an affordable price. And we think we’ve found it – no, we are SURE we have found it. Simplicity is at its core, employing enterprise-grade technology to simplify and streamline the day-to-day work. Our unified platform and onboarding process, seamlessly detects, prevents, and responds to cyber threats in the most holistic, hassle-free, and cost-effective way.

We are offering a 14 day free trial and will cover:

Email security.
Cloud data.
Automated cyber awareness training.
External risk.
Endpoint security.
Secure browsing.
Phishing simulation.
And as an added bonus we can provide cyber insurance at a price which is directly linked to your risk score within or system. The lower your risk, the cheaper the insurance.

This system is deliberately aimed at 1-250 IT users in any business. Most SMEs come in around 10 to 15 IT users, but we’re not precious about it. It is a managed service, and we have our eyes on the glass and can mitigate your risks automatically, or in concert with you, depending on how you wish to tailor the service. All this for a mere £12 per user per month.

HOW DO HACKERS HACK?

You’ll have to forgive me for a somewhat provocative title and allow me some poetic licence, because in fact, different hacking groups do things differently, although they have much in common. Personally, I don’t like the term hacker, much preferring cybercriminal, because anyone who accesses a system without the owners’ permission, is by definition, a criminal. But I suppose hacker is less of a mouthful.

So, what is hacking? Hacking involves exploiting vulnerabilities in systems, software, or networks to gain unauthorised access or manipulate data using a variety of techniques and methods, which tend to combine technical tactics and social engineering.

One of the first things a hacker, or criminal group, will do, is to profile your organisation and your people. Favourite open sources of information include:

Social media: Information about hobbies, job roles, family, and schedules shared on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Do you have a social media policy in your company? Do you lay down what an employee can and cannot say about your company on their personal social media pages? Do you have a designated person in the company who handles your company’s profile on social media?

Company Website: You’ll want to give prospective clients contact information of course, but you should not give out individual email addresses and limit profiles published. I do give my personal profile on my website but don’t give information about any other position, leaving it to a generic phone number and email address.

Professional Profiles: LinkedIn is a favourite for targeting businesses, as it provides details about an individual’s role, connections, and organisational structure.

Personal Websites or Blogs: These may reveal contact details, interests, or sensitive information inadvertently. The same issues that appertain to social media apply here.

Data Brokers: Cybercriminals can purchase detailed dossiers on individuals from data aggregator sites.

Another favourite is phishing and pretexting.

Phishing Emails: We all know, or at least I hope we know, what phishing is. Attackers send emails designed to extract more information, such as login credentials, by posing as a trusted entity. In this context, it could be as simple as the attacker wanting to verify information by perhaps sending an email to a discovered address but wanting to confirm that individuals position in the company. That just requires a response showing a signature block, so the phishing email might seem very innocuous.

Fake Surveys or Job Offers: These can be used to obtain detailed personal or professional data.

There are a variety of reconnaissance tools used by attackers, including open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools, WHOIS lookups and scanning misconfigured systems using commercially available tools such as Nmap and Nessus, which identify open ports, services and weak configurations. This is why it’s essential to regularly scan your network for these weaknesses. Ports can be opened for a particular reason and never closed again. It’s a common fault.

Here at H2 we scan the dark web daily looking for leaked credentials, particularly email credentials. When we on board a new client we nearly always get hits with sometimes up to 20+ compromised email addresses including passwords. You might ask why they’d be on the dark web – simple, they are often up for sale on dark web marketplaces.

In terms of cybercrime, who’s heard of psychological profiling? Cybercriminals analyse:

Behavioural Patterns: Regularity in actions, such as times a person is online, financial habits, or common purchases.

Weaknesses and Triggers: Examples include a recent job loss, major life changes, or emotional vulnerabilities, which they exploit through spear-phishing or scams.

I’ve often argued on these pages, that your employees are both your first line of defence and your greatest weakness, and that a good cyber awareness programme is worth its weight in gold. Cybercriminals often focus on employees in specific departments (like HR, finance, or IT).

LinkedIn and Organization Charts: Identify individuals with access to sensitive data.

Impersonation: Pretending to be a senior executive to trick lower-level employees (e.g., through Business Email Compromise attacks – I’ve written about the CEO scam a lot).

Technical Probing: Use of phishing or malware to breach a target’s employer.

In conclusion, what I’ve tried to do here is give you a flavour of what you may be up against, and I hope, I’ve shown you that for all the reasons shown above technology comes last after people and process. All the tech in the world won’t prevent issues arising from the above and is just one part of an integrated defence in depth required to prevent disaster.

Remote Working and Encryption

This is a subject that I tend to jump on every so often, because it’s one that people just don’t seem to get. Whether it’s working from home, from a coffee shop, airport, railway station etc, there is this perception that it’s safe because you’re connected via VPN, or perhaps some other form of application which encrypts data in transit. Well, let’s explore this subject a bit further.

There is no doubt that the propensity for working from home, or other remote locations, since COVID has introduced some very difficult, or at least challenging, security vulnerabilities into your network. For instance, prior to the pandemic, when you were 100% office based (except perhaps some mobile salespeople), your local IT provider will have almost certainly set up what we called the bastion security model. Ie, like a castle, a bastion, you had a wall around you, and for belt and braces, you also had a moat. The gateway was robust, had a drawbridge and portcullis, or let’s call it a secure firewall and anti-malware system. Everything was locked up inside and nice and secure (in fact it probably wasn’t but that’s for another day).

Whilst Microsoft didn’t invent the term the ‘new normal’, they were the first, I believe, to apply it to IT, following the enforced change in working practices brought about by the pandemic. Many companies have embraced this new normal and have settled into some form of hybrid working. Of course, this is nothing new, it’s been ‘a thing’ for years now, certainly regarding corporate organisations. The real change came about in SMEs for whom it really was quite revolutionary. Corporate bodies will have spent a lot of money on a variety or remote access systems to keep their data secure, whilst SMEs not only had to rush unprepared because of the pandemic, but they simply didn’t have the budget to employ more secure connections.

What the pandemic has done is change that, or perhaps arguably, accelerated the change to a more distributed way of working, already underway in corporate organisations but now common amongst SMEs. What does that mean for us? Firstly, we have to re-think how we are going to work. We start from a position where we still have preexisting tech, such as VPNs and whole disk encryption, to tackle modern and evolving issues.

So, what about VPNs? What are they? A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a service that creates a secure, encrypted connection between your device and the internet. This private “tunnel” protects your data and hides your IP address, effectively masking your online identity and activity. It works by allowing you to connect to the internet via an encrypted tunnel to a VPN server, which then forwards your requests to the website or service you’re accessing. The benefits are that it protects your data from being accessed by hackers or eavesdroppers, especially on public WIFI. It masks your IP address and replaces it with one from the VPN server, so it’s harder for websites, advertisers, or even your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to track your online activity. It’s particularly useful when working from insecure public WIFI but should also be used when working from home.

VPNs are available as standalone apps and more often now, incorporated into other applications, particularly those used to connect to cloud services.

All good, right? Well yes, anything that helps secure your data is a good thing. But like all good things it has some downsides. A VPN does help protect data in transit over an insecure WIFI connection by encrypting the data you send and receive over the internet. This means that if you’re connected to an insecure WIFI network (like in a coffee shop or airport), the VPN will prevent anyone from intercepting and reading your internet traffic.

However, a VPN does not protect data stored locally on your laptop. Files or personal information saved directly on your hard drive are not protected by the VPN. To secure the data on your laptop, you may want to consider using additional protections such as some sort of full disk encryption (BitLocker for Windows or FileVault for macOS are standard with the operating systems) to protect data at rest. And you should be using strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.

So, what I’m saying here is that should someone manage to gain access to your end point ie your laptop, desktop, even your phone, then your VPN is not going to protect you.

Let’s now talk a bit more about Bitlocker and FileVault. BitLocker, Microsoft’s disk encryption tool, provides robust security when configured properly (but I make the point here that it’s often not only incorrectly configured but isn’t even in use, making it pointless). And, like all encryption systems, its security depends on several factors, including the version of BitLocker, implementation practices, and potential vulnerabilities in the system environment. Bitlocker uses strong encryption, either AES 128 or 256 Bit, both of which are considered secure.

FileVault is the MacOS equivalent of Bitlocker (roughly) and is considered secure and built into the MacOS and is very easy to switch on. It too offers full disk encryption using AES 128 or 256 Bit. Once again though it is often not in use by Mac users, many of whom don’t even know it exists.

Are there any drawbacks to whole disk encryption? Will it protect me against things like ransomware? Whole disk encryption is designed to secure data at rest by preventing unauthorised access to data on a physical storage device (e.g., in case the device is lost or stolen). The problem is that once the machine is booted up, using the correct authentication, the disk is unencrypted, allowing you access to the data. So, the answer to the specific question re ransomware is that such an attack is typically not mitigated by this kind of encryption because:

Ransomware Operates at the OS Level: Once a device is booted up and the encrypted disk is unlocked (usually via user login), ransomware can interact with files just like any other software. Since the operating system has access to the data, the ransomware does as well.

Ransomware Encrypts Data Independently: Ransomware generally works by encrypting the contents of individual files or directories (not the entire disk), effectively “locking” them within the already-decrypted environment. BitLocker, or any full disk encryption, won’t stop ransomware from doing this, as it doesn’t interfere with file operations once the system is unlocked.

No Version Control or Rollback: Whole disk encryption solutions don’t provide a way to revert to previous file versions or recover from ransomware encryption. This is where regular backups (stored separately from the network) play a critical role in protecting against ransomware.

You’re being careful, you have a VPN, and you have Bitlocker configured on your laptop. You’re feeling nice and secure and have no issues using the local Coffee Shop or your home WIFI. Your connection to your cloud service is secure and all your data in transit is encrypted. Even your email is going via a secure tunnel. All is good with the world. Except of course that as soon as you logged on your whole disk encryption is switched off and your data is vulnerable even before you transmit it. Any data you download to work on likewise becomes vulnerable as soon as it lands on your laptop.

Earlier I argued that VPNs were old tech being used to combat modern threats and a different way of working. Does that mean that I think the VPN is no longer useful and is going out of style. No of course not, VPNs have a very real place in our security architectures and that won’t go away anytime soon. But they, like the vulnerabilities they are trying to mitigate, have to evolve and keep pace with present day and future realities.

VPNs, whether stand alone, or incorporated into another technology are great at securing data in transit. What about your data at rest? The best VPN in the world won’t protect you from someone who is determined to get in and steal your data or install ransomware. The problem for SMEs is the same that it pretty much always has been. Cost. Can they afford a system that will protect their data and stop it being lost, stolen or ransomed.

What has long been needed is a simple, flexible and intuitive security solution. We believe we have found such a system that protects your company against all known threats, and puts you firmly in control of your data, working automatically 24/7 to identify and safeguard your sensitive information.

Delivering multi-level protection, it provides real time control over all sensitive data. You can identify and solve every problem with a single click of your mouse! Instead of whole disk encryption, which is decrypted as soon as you log on, it provides file level encryption which allows authorised users access but no one else. But it does more, it locates all your data, allows you to decide what is, and what is not, sensitive, and provides subscription pricing for a fully managed solution.

It’s a system that is designed specifically for SMEs and is therefore appropriate to you, and affordable. To prove that we offer a 30-day free trial so that you can see it for yourself. Check it out at https://hah2.co.uk/gdpr-data-protection/.

Ransomware and the risk to SMEs

There’s a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), going around about Ransomware, and it has to be said that a lot of it comes from cyber security companies. But amongst the rocks there are some very real diamonds that need the publicity. There is a very real difference between genuine information and propaganda. I hope what I do is spread information.

There is a prevailing feeling amongst small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that they are not a desirable target for Ransomware and it’s therefore not a problem for them. However, that’s simply not true and they are increasingly vulnerable to ransomware attacks, with recent trends showing a notable rise in these incidents among smaller businesses. Several factors influence the likelihood of SMEs being targeted:

Widespread Targeting: SMEs are often viewed as “soft targets” because they may lack the advanced cybersecurity defences of larger corporations. Attackers assume that smaller businesses may have fewer resources dedicated to security, making them easier to compromise.
Increasing Ransomware Attacks Overall: Ransomware attacks globally have been on the rise, and attackers have shifted their focus to include not only large enterprises but also smaller organisations across various sectors. This is often due to the lower cost of launching ransomware campaigns, allowing attackers to spread wide nets with mass phishing campaigns and automated attacks.
Financial and Operational Impact: Many SMEs are attractive to attackers because the disruption from ransomware can be financially devastating for them. SMEs may feel greater pressure to pay the ransom to restore operations quickly, fearing the loss of business or reputation if the downtime persists.
Underinvestment in Cybersecurity: SMEs often underinvest in cybersecurity due to budget constraints, lack of expertise, or other business priorities. This underinvestment can lead to outdated software, limited employee training on cybersecurity best practices, and weaker defences that attackers can exploit.

Likelihood and Statistics

High Likelihood: Studies show that more than half of SMEs have experienced a cyberattack in the last year, with ransomware being one of the most common types of attack.
Small Business Victimisation: According to a 2022 survey by the Cyber Readiness Institute, nearly 60% of small businesses were targeted by cyberattacks, and a significant portion of these involved ransomware.
Increasing Cost: For many SMEs, the average cost of a ransomware attack, including downtime, lost revenue, and recovery expenses, can be as high as £50 to a £100K, making the financial impact severe and sometimes unmanageable without external assistance.

Key Risk Factors for SMEs

Lack of Security Awareness and Training: Employees at SMEs may be less well trained on cybersecurity threats, increasing the risk of phishing and social engineering attacks that lead to ransomware.
Lack of Backup and Recovery Plans: SMEs may not have effective data backup or disaster recovery strategies, making them more susceptible to extended downtime or paying the ransom.
Weak Network and Endpoint Security: Limited resources often mean that SMEs may not have enterprise-grade firewalls, intrusion detection, or antivirus solutions, leaving systems exposed to exploitation. They also struggle with the distributed work practice (office, home etc) that has happened since COVID.
Encryption: Data is often unencrypted on end point machines.

Reducing the Risk

While the risk is high, SMEs can take measures to reduce the likelihood and impact of a ransomware attack:

Implementing Regular Backups: Ensuring data backups are frequent, secured, and tested for restoration can significantly reduce the impact of an attack.
Employee Training: Conducting regular training to recognize phishing and social engineering can help employees avoid common attack vectors.
Monitoring: No or inadequate monitoring of their data and systems, including home and other remote workers.
Endpoint and Network Security: Investing in antivirus software, firewalls, and network monitoring can improve defences.
Cyber Insurance: Purchasing cyber insurance can help mitigate financial losses associated with an attack.
Data encryption.

In summary, while SMEs face a high likelihood of ransomware attacks, increasing awareness, preparation, and proactive defence measures can substantially reduce both the risk and the impact of an attack.

What is the impact of a Ransomware Attack?

Ransomware can have devastating effects on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Here are some of the key impacts:

Financial Losses

Ransom Payment: If SMEs decide to pay the ransom (which is not generally recommended), this can result in significant, sometimes crippling, costs.
Operational Downtime: Even if no ransom is paid, businesses often experience significant downtime as they attempt to recover systems, which can halt revenue generation and lead to lost sales.
Recovery Costs: In addition to the ransom, SMEs incur expenses related to data recovery, IT support, and forensic investigation. Often, additional security solutions are needed to prevent future attacks.

Loss of Data

Data Encryption or Destruction: Ransomware can lead to the permanent loss of critical data if files are corrupted or remain encrypted after an attack.
Loss of Sensitive Information: SMEs may lose access to sensitive customer or business data, leading to gaps in operational records or strategic plans.

Reputational Damage

Loss of Customer Trust: Ransomware attacks, especially if customer data is exposed or operations are disrupted, can damage customer confidence. Many SMEs rely on personal relationships, and a ransomware incident can harm these relationships.
Brand Damage: Businesses often struggle to rebuild trust, and reputation damage may deter new clients and weaken partnerships with vendors or other business partners.

Legal and Regulatory Consequences

Compliance Violations: If SMEs operate in regulated sectors (like finance, healthcare, or legal services), a data breach can lead to violations of regulations like GDPR, resulting in fines and other penalties.
Legal Liabilities: Affected customers or vendors may pursue legal action if sensitive data is compromised, adding further financial strain.

Operational Disruptions

Halting of Services: For many SMEs, especially those without a strong IT infrastructure, ransomware can paralyse day-to-day operations.
Long Recovery Times: SMEs often lack the same level of IT resources as larger enterprises, so restoring full operational capacity after an attack can take weeks or months.

Employee Productivity and Morale

Reduced Productivity: During and after a ransomware attack, employees may be unable to work if they lack access to necessary files, email, or software.
Psychological Impact: The stress and uncertainty from a cyberattack can lead to anxiety or frustration among employees, potentially impacting morale and retention.

Increased Insurance Costs

Higher Cyber Insurance Premiums: Cyber insurance costs tend to increase significantly for companies that have experienced ransomware attacks. Additionally, insurers may demand proof of enhanced security measures to continue providing coverage.

Pressure to Strengthen Cybersecurity Measures

Increased Security Costs: Post-incident, SMEs often must invest in more robust cybersecurity infrastructure, including advanced threat detection, backup solutions, and employee training.
Ongoing Monitoring Needs: Ransomware may prompt SMEs to adopt more rigorous monitoring and endpoint protection tools, leading to continuous IT spending.

Ransomware attacks can be particularly harmful to SMEs because they often have fewer resources for cybersecurity, and a single attack can have a prolonged impact. Many SMEs lack a full-time IT staff or robust data backup protocols, which can compound the impact. Consequently, proactive measures, such as employee training, regular data backups, and up-to-date cybersecurity defences, are critical to reducing the likelihood and impact of ransomware attacks on SMEs.

What Do SME Owners and Directors Want From Cyber Security?

I wrote a post earlier this week exploring what SME owners and directors really care about when it comes to cyber security! Do they really care about the how the latest technological solutions work? Do they really care about the scare stories, or at least, do they really think that they apply to them. Oh, they might have a sneaky suspicion that it could be a problem but is it on their mind enough for them to do something about it.

The argument was made that this is especially true in an economic downturn when they are focused on costs, even more than they normally are. They want robust cyber security solutions that don’t cost an arm and a leg. And what they don’t want is jargon and tech speak that they feel is aimed at bamboozling them with science in order to convince them they should buy something that they don’t actually need.

We are believers that what is needed is simplicity. SMEs are looking for user-friendly security measures that don’t require a PhD in Cyber Science. They don’t want jargon or even industry metrics. Remember the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid.

Of course they are going to have a focus, and you need to understand what is important to them and what isn’t. That will depend on the nature of their business to a great extent. Whilst there are commonalities regardless of the vertical they work in, there will always be differences, some big, some more subtle, that will impact any cyber security solutioning.

Nowadays many SMEs are increasingly aware of cybersecurity risks, but a significant number still underestimate the importance of cybersecurity risk management. SMEs often face unique challenges in this area due to limited resources, competing priorities, and often a lack of expertise not just in their organisation but also in the IT support company’s they use. Here are some insights into the current landscape:

Growing Awareness: SMEs have started to recognise that they are just as likely to be targeted by cyber threats as larger companies, partly due to high-profile ransomware attacks and data breaches affecting businesses of all sizes. As a result, awareness is rising, especially as more businesses transition to digital platforms and remote work, which increases exposure to cyber risks.

Resource Constraints: For many SMEs, the cost of robust cybersecurity measures can be prohibitive. They often lack dedicated IT and cybersecurity teams, which makes it challenging to implement and maintain comprehensive security protocols. Cybersecurity solutions can be expensive, so SMEs may prioritise short-term operational needs over what they might perceive as longer-term security investments.

Risk Perception and Underestimation: Some SMEs mistakenly believe they are too small to be targeted by cybercriminals, assuming that attackers primarily focus on large corporations. However, this “security by obscurity” mindset has been proven false, as attackers often view SMEs as easier targets due to their weaker defences.

Impact of a Breach on SMEs: Unlike larger companies, SMEs are less likely to recover from a significant cyber incident. A data breach or ransomware attack can be devastating, leading to financial losses, reputational damage, and even closure. Despite this, many SMEs may not fully understand the potential scale of these consequences.

Compliance and Regulatory Pressure: With increasing data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, PCI), SMEs are under more pressure to adopt better cybersecurity practices to remain compliant. This has led to greater awareness among some SMEs, especially those handling sensitive data like healthcare, finance, or customer and payment information.

Cybersecurity Awareness Training and Culture: Even when SMEs implement some cybersecurity measures, they may lack the necessary employee training and risk management practices that foster a security-focused culture. Human error remains a leading cause of data breaches, so SMEs need to prioritize employee awareness and training.

In summary, while awareness of cybersecurity risk management is growing among SMEs, gaps remain, particularly around adequate investment, robust risk perception, and ongoing management of cybersecurity threats. Cybersecurity can seem overwhelming for small businesses, but as the digital landscape continues to evolve, understanding and addressing these risks is becoming essential for SME survival and growth.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Did you know that October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month? No – not terribly surprised after the poll we put out asking how important this subject was. The response was truly frightening. Cybersecurity Awareness month has participants in many countries and sponsored by many governments and tries to push awareness of the importance of this subject, across all industries.

Why do we think it’s so important? Why would an SME bother with it? Well, in short, it’s probably the single most cost effective and quickest win you can make. It really doesn’t have to cost a fortune, it’s not techie if done right, is educational and it beefs up your security by ensuring your staff can spot a scam when they see one, can recognise social engineering and how to counter it, won’t open a rogue email and it generally keeps the subject in the forefront of minds.

OK, but what’s the threat? Do hackers/scammers prey on SMEs? Is there sufficient financial reward there for them? Yes, yes and again yes. The UK GDP is made up of north of 90% from SMEs. Just think about that – 90% of the countries wealth is generated by SMEs, so a huge financial target. The big companies spend a fortune on cyber security protections. Most spend up to 15% of their annual IT budget on security and when you think that the IT budget often runs into millions, that’s big bucks. SMEs can’t afford that and that makes them a much easier target.

I wrote a blog recently about the findings of the 2024 cyber security breaches survey. The report tells us that among businesses, there has been a shift in the proportion saying cyber security is a “fairly” high priority (e.g. from 35% of businesses last year, to 40% this year). The proportions of businesses saying it is a very high priority is consistent with last year (36% last year and 35% this year). In 2023, as evidenced by the qualitative interviews, it was felt that cyber security had moved down the agenda among the businesses where it was already seen as a more marginal priority, and among businesses that typically have the fewest resources to deploy. The qualitative findings this year point towards an increased awareness of the risks that are faced when not prioritising cyber security, which could explain the increase in businesses this year rating it as a high priority.

It is more common for larger businesses to say that cyber security is a high priority (93% of medium businesses and 98% of large businesses, vs. 75% overall). The same is true for high-income charities (93% of those with income of £500,000 or more, vs. 63% overall). This continues the pattern seen since 2020, where larger organisations tend to treat cyber security more seriously, and consequently allocate more resources to it.

Businesses in the following sectors tend to treat cyber security as a higher priority than others:

information and communications (65% a “very” high priority)
finance and insurance (61% say it is a “very” high priority)
health, social care and social work (62% a “very” high priority).

These percentages are still very low and amongst this, if we drill down, we will find that the prevailing answer amongst SMEs remains to reach for technology for protection. Technology will help, but it isn’t the full answer. When faced with constraints such as a tight budget it’s essential that a business prioritises its spend, making sure that it is targeting what really needs protection, and making sure that the protections in place are actually doing what you think they’re doing. That is essentially what we refer to in regard to risk management. It’s a business issue, not an IT issue.

In the 2024 survey, half of businesses and around a third of charities report having experienced some kind of cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months. As in previous years, larger businesses and charities are more likely to identify breaches or attacks than smaller ones. This latter point is worth mentioning because it’s generally only the larger businesses that have some kind of monitoring in place to identify an attack and many smaller businesses only find out when they start losing money.

Of course, good old COVID has had its effect, and I know we still bang on about it but that’s because its effect is long term. It has changed our working practices in many respects although there is more of a move towards a return to the workplace currently, but some businesses have embraced the hybrid working practice and look unlikely to change. My own client base has only seen one client move to 100% remote working, but they are all working some form of hybrid working pattern.

Many corporates have had some form of hybrid working for a long time, pre-COVID. When I was at HP and before that in Symantec, we worked the hot desk system with people working remotely a couple of days a week. It’s not new at that level but it is at the SME level, and we need more sophisticated ways of protecting ourselves at a price we can afford. And that’s been the focus for us, and we are now confident that we have solutions that fit an SMEs requirement, at a price they can afford.

Ransomware, Phishing and other Malware