UK's Attitude To Security Spotlit By Government Figures

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

UK businesses' response to security breaches has "astounded" experts following the release of the government's official cybercrime stats for 2024.

The report from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), released today, painted security as more of an afterthought for UK businesses, especially when considering the figures about how breaches are handled.

Some of the figures are remarkably low. For example, only 22 percent of 2,000 businesses have a formal incident response plan in place, which has "astounded" experts.

"Only a fraction of UK businesses have any kind of formalized incident response plan, which I find astounding," said Andy Kays, CEO at Socura. "Businesses will always have a plan in case of a fire, but will not apply the same due care for a data breach - which is statistically much more likely. It flies in the face of common sense."

The reporting of breaches to external authorities and organizations is also low. Only 10 percent of businesses ring the police when they detect the most disruptive breach in the previous 12 months - a stat that's halved when looking at who reports incidents to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Reporting rates to arguably the most important entity, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), weren't even included in the report since the watchdog didn't make the top ten organizations that receive reports of breaches. Banks, building societies, and credit card issuers, on the other hand, placed first - 32 percent of businesses reported incidents to them.

Clients and customers were only alerted 5 percent of the time.

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