{"id":88530,"date":"2023-03-20T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-20T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=88530"},"modified":"2023-03-20T20:01:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T20:01:00","slug":"ncsc-launches-cyber-check-up-tools-for-smes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=88530","title":{"rendered":"NCSC launches cyber check-up tools for SMEs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The UK\u2019s National Cyber Security Centre<\/a> (NCSC) is today launching two new services pitched at the country\u2019s 5.5 million small businesses, a third of which were targeted by cyber criminals in 2022, but which frequently lack the know-how and resources to effectively respond to the threat and protect their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

The Cyber Action Plan and Check Your Cyber Security tools form part of the latest phase of the NCSC\u2019s long-running Cyber Aware<\/a> campaign and aim to raise awareness of cyber security issues among small businesses, micro businesses and organisations, and sole traders.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmall businesses are the backbone of the UK, but we know that cyber criminals continue to view them as targets,\u201d said NCSC CEO Lindy Cameron.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why the NCSC has created the Cyber Action Plan and Check Your Cyber Security to help them boost their online defences in a matter of minutes. I strongly encourage all small businesses to use these tools today to keep the cyber criminals out and their operations on track.\u201d   <\/p>\n

Cyber Action Plan<\/a> is a questionnaire that guides users through a set of questions relating to cyber security basics such as credential hygiene, backups and patching. It can be completed within five minutes and, when finished, users will receive tailored advice based on their answers as to how they could improve their security posture.<\/p>\n

Check Your Cyber Security<\/a> \u2013 which can also be accessed via the Action Plan \u2013 offers free, instantaneous online testing to check the security of the user\u2019s IP address and website and web browser, with testing for email services to be added in the near future. It does not require any software to be downloaded to the user\u2019s system and is designed to be used by any small organisations to identify and fix security issues quickly and effectively.<\/p>\n

Given the publicity and impact of high-profile cyber attacks such as those on Royal Mail<\/a> or WH Smith<\/a>, many small business owners could be forgiven for thinking themselves unlikely to be targeted by cyber criminals.<\/p>\n

However, this could not be further from the truth, and for those who are unlucky enough to be victimised \u2013 without the support of a CISO, a security team or a forensic investigator \u2013 the experience can be traumatic.<\/p>\n

Keri Ackling, who co-owns a small business with her husband Tom, worked hard over six years to grow Snow Windows<\/a>, a small business that creates festive designs, stickers and custom stencils for people to decorate their windows at Christmas. In 2021, she fell victim to a phishing email that seemed to have originated from Instagram, where she runs a popular account showcasing her work<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt said that now I was near 10,000 followers my account was eligible for all these other features, such as going live and blue tick verification. Since the information was accurate \u2013 our account was just a few hundred followers short of 10k \u2013 I clicked on the link and entered my email and password to verify the account. Not long after I did that I realise all the posts had been wiped from the Instagram account,\u201d said Ackling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was completely heart sinking. You work so long and so hard to build up social media pages and grow your following and everything had just gone. A fair bit of my business was coming from Instagram at this point, so the prospect of all of that disappearing was devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, Ackling noticed that the attacker had posted an Instagram story to her account demanding a Bitcoin ransom to reinstate her access. \u201cThere was never any question of paying it. Aside from not wanting to give into them, we didn\u2019t have any idea how to get hold of Bitcoin,\u201d she said. \u201cWe refused to pay the ransom and ignored the message, instead we spoke to Instagram and explained the issue. But suddenly and without warning the account was completely shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snow Windows gets huge amounts of business from its social media accounts, and Ackling and her husband feared they might never regain access. They even started a campaign to get it back, and were featured on the BBC and DJ Chris Moyles\u2019 Radio X<\/em> show \u2013 Moyles had previously been a customer.<\/p>\n

Meta did eventually reinstate the account and reset Ackling\u2019s login, however, she then started to notice things going wrong with her linked Facebook account, where the business has more than 200,000 followers.<\/p>\n

In the past 18 months, Ackling has not been able to post any adverts onto her Facebook business page, and Meta seems to have been unable to fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in 2019, the Snow Windows Facebook page got 273 million organic interactions during October to December. So, more than three years on we can\u2019t imagine how much growth and business we\u2019ve missed out on as a result of this issue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Aiden Ryan, meanwhile, started his business Loaf Manchester<\/a> as a lockdown baking project in May 2020. He now supplies bakes to cafes across Manchester, as well as Selfridges\u2019 Trafford Centre branch. Ryan was victimised by a cyber attack against his personal Twitter account after his credentials were leaked to a dark web site.<\/p>\n

Having been burned in this way, when setting up Loaf, Ryan prioritised implementing two-factor authentication<\/a> on all his social media accounts and set up an entirely new email address.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing when it happens to your personal accounts where you speak to friends and family, and quite another when it\u2019s a business account with following of 14,000 and two to three years of work behind it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think ever since I started using two-step verification, I felt more confident. I don\u2019t feel scared it\u2019s going to happen to me, but I do know that you can always do more.<\/p>\n

\u201cLoaf was built through community. It was an underdog story \u2013 people want to see good things happen. Which is why I feel so passionate about this too \u2013 I want to help others in the business community recognise that this matters. Businesses are built through community and they thrive through community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is today launching two new services pitched at the country\u2019s 5.5 million small businesses, a third of which were targeted by cyber criminals in 2022, but which frequently lack the know-how and resources to effectively respond to the threat and protect their livelihoods. The Cyber Action Plan and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[533],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/88531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}