IQ-Magazine-Issue-15

IQ business advice
Area Director for SME banking for Lloyds, Steve Elsom, offers advice to
businesses and individuals on how they can take measures to keep data safe.
One of the fastest growing trends across the economy is cyber
crime. Every day, there are around 2,000 attacks worldwide,
costing the global economy an estimated £300bn a year. Yet
more than two thirds of firms say that they feel inadequately
protected against increasingly sophisticated hackers looking
to extort money through blackmail or steal data to sell on the
‘dark web’.
Once dubbed ‘Britain’s Greatest Fraudster’, Tony Sales is
the classic ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’. He now speaks at
conferences around the world on how you can make it more
difficult for the fraudster and, more importantly, how you
need to continually assess your own security processes and
procedures. Speaking on The Business Hub on Star Radio
recently, he stated, “No-one is safe”, commenting that being
more aware of our data security is paramount - for instance,
leaving paperwork laying around with your personal details
on is just what fraudsters are after. “Data is the new cash,”
said Tony, talking about how credit card details are sold for
as little as 50p on the dark web. He says that “ransom ware”
is the new trend; as we have seen recently, there is now a
tendency for fraudsters to confront their victims, threatening
that unless ransom demands are met, they will publicise the
victims’ details on a public site. These could be memberships
of clubs and organisations that victims would not wish to have
made public, or they could be details of payments that are
being made to organisations like political parties and fringe
organisations that might bring potential for embarrassment
and damage to the victims.
So, what can you do to ‘keep safe’? Firstly, protect your data.
Given that in the digital world in which we live, we will send
and receive data 365 days a year…think what data you might
encrypt, so that if your system was hacked, less damage might
potentially be done. Purchase an online protection package
to minimise the threat and enable the more obvious malware
attacks to be repelled.
How often do you open an attachment from an
uncorroborated source? Think about the potential risk this
might create. Another risk is how, through social engineering
i.e. befriending and interacting with you via social media
platforms like Facebook and Twitter, fraudsters can build your
trust in them, then strike.
Lloyds, along with all banks, spends several million each year
in building systems to prevent fraud, supporting victims of
fraud and inevitably losing money to fraud.
issue 15 | page 18