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“Cyber-attacks make headlines on a daily basis, and today Equifax has fallen victim. With data becoming a new currency in itself, any organisation that holds data has a target on their backs. These threats are only going to increase exponentially, and as a result no business can afford not to take their data protection and cyber security seriously, or indeed make it their number one priority. We have seen how data breaches do indeed have both reputational and financial ramifications, and in this case, with Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses being accessed, a lot will need to be done to build up customer trust again.

“What businesses in the UK should take away from this breach is the seriousness of data protection. The implementation of GDPR is going to be upon us before we know it, where businesses will also have to pay regulatory fines on top of any customer fall out, brand damage and stakeholder relations they would have to manage. Organisations need to take these headlines as a warning and use this as an opportunity to get all of their cyber measures in place.

“It’s clear, determined attackers do find ways to breach various layers of defence, so, organisations need to focus on playbook driven approaches and true security analytics, concentrating their efforts on protecting the data and entities that would cause significant damage to the business. It’s key to collect the right logs at the right logging levels, integrated with threat intelligence. This would provide the context and situational awareness, necessary to deal with today’s advanced cyber threats. There must be a clear and well-rehearsed incident management plan for a breach, addressing internal and external communication in addition to containment and recovery activities. Ensuring a compliant business environment: that will help protect the services that we depend on as a nation.”