According to some research carried out for CyberNorth by students at Northumbria University, nearly two thirds of businesses recognised that their organisation had been compromised by a cyber security incident in the last year. Only one in five businesses, however, were confident that they had put enough steps in place to at least mitigate the threat.
This is a worrying statistic and one that we keep coming back to. With the vast majority of businesses in the region being micro to small, thinking about cyber security can be an overhead that the owners and managers struggle to deal with, yet this should not be the case. When it comes to looking after your business premises then buying decent door and window locks can help enormously and, in a similar vein there are many simple things that you can do to make immediate improvements to your systems and data security.
That is what this event is about, the fifth in the series of fourteen which make up this year’s #CyberFest.
Supported by Waterstons and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) you will hear about what you can start to do straightaway. Following an introduction from Reshma Begun from the FSB you will hear from Adam Vietch, from Aspire which is hosting the event on ‘10 steps to security success for a SME’. This will be followed by John Baty from Cheviot Insured on ‘How cyber insurance can help your business’
At the recent Northumbrian Water Group Innovation Festival, Graham Jordan, from ISNorth East, led one of our daily dashes looking at addressing the business impacts of cyber incidents. At this event he will describe what we learnt and introduce the Cyber Resilience Starter Guide. This will provide a nice segway into a workshop led by Danielle Phillips, from Insideout consulting on ‘Building a positive cyber security culture in your organisation.’
Cyber security may seem daunting, and at times it is yet there are so many simple things that can be done to help. Come along to this event to find out how.
All the #CyberFest events are free and tickets are available from here. I hope to see you there.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 