Most cyber security advice is written for the person who configures the firewall. This one is written for the person who pays for it. Six threats that actually reach UK businesses, what each one costs when it lands, and the control that answers it.
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In 1970, 7,499 people died on Britain's roads. Last year the figure was under 1,700, on far more traffic. That did not happen because drivers got better — it happened because every serious crash was investigated and the fix became standard. Cyber security works the same way, on a much shorter cycle. The difference is that the baseline moves every year rather than every decade.
Thirteen pages. No product pitch, no configuration detail — the commercial case, in plain language.
Each one comes with the business risk it creates and the control that answers it. Every control in the guide can be put in place and evidenced.
A message asking one of your staff to hand over a credential, approve a payment or open a file. Cheap to send at volume, and now well written.
The one that stops you trading. Order processing, payroll and client records all become unavailable at once, for days rather than hours.
No software is exploited. The target is a person — a call to your service desk, or a supplier asking to update their bank details.
Voice cloning now makes a convincing phone call from a few seconds of recorded audio, aimed at the handful of people who can move money.
An attacker sits quietly inside a mailbox and joins the thread with new bank details. After 24 hours the funds are rarely recoverable.
A flat network where a visitor's phone, a CCTV camera and the finance PC all sit together. A route in that requires nobody to click anything.
of UK businesses experienced a breach or attack in the previous twelve months
the figure rises for medium-sized businesses, where the estate is larger and less reviewed
of turnover is the indicative benchmark for total IT spend, security included
Source: UK Government Cyber Security Breaches Survey. Budget figures are indicative and set out in full in the guide.
You should not need technical knowledge to assess your own exposure. You need the answers to be specific, evidenced and dated. Anything answered with “I think so” is a gap.
All twelve are in the guide, alongside the answer that should worry you.
Enforce multi-factor authentication on every account without exception, hold immutable off-site backups that you have actually restored from, run endpoint detection and response with someone watching the alerts out of hours, configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC on every domain you send from, and put a written out-of-band verification step in front of any change to supplier bank details. Those five cover the large majority of incidents that reach businesses of this size.
Owners, finance directors and operations leads who sign off the IT budget and want the commercial case rather than the configuration detail. If you are looking for a technical implementation manual, this is not it.
Not directly. Cyber Essentials is an independent statement that the basics are covered — patching, access control, MFA, malware protection and firewalls. Think of it as the MOT certificate rather than the car. Following Cyber Essentials standards will make your business more secure though. It is increasingly a condition of tender and of sitting in someone else's supply chain, which is a commercial reason to hold it in its own right.
The guide uses an indicative benchmark of 0.5% to 1.5% of turnover for the whole IT function — support, infrastructure, licensing, hardware refresh and security as one combined budget, rather than security as a line on top. Businesses holding sensitive data or running multiple sites sit at the upper end.
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Thirteen pages on what actually threatens a UK business, what it costs, and what to do about it. Free, and no call required.
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