As October 2023 is the 20th annual cyber security awareness month we thought we would share some information on cyber crime and point you towards some resources that may help your practice improve its cyber security.
Recent government figures estimate that across all UK businesses, approximately 2.39 million instances of cyber crime and around 49,000 instances of fraud (as a result of cyber crime) took place in the last 12 months.
A recent report suggested that the data from over one million NHS patients may have been compromised from the NHS data used for ‘research purposes’ that was leaked in the University of Manchester’s recent data breach. Some of the reportedly stolen data includes NHS numbers and the first three letters of patients’ postcodes.
The type of cyber attack keeps changing and numerous emerging threat trends and new tactics across phishing and social engineering, data theft and extortion, ransomware and software supply chain attacks have been identified this year alone.
You can download some resources to help you with cyber security from the following websites:
NHS Digital – https://digital.nhs.uk/cyber-and-data-security/campaigns/cyber-security-awareness-month-october-2023.
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/collection/small-business-guide.