You were most likely hacked last week

You don’t know about it and why would you – the fact is that studies show over 74% of UK small businesses had a security breach in the last 12 months. The remaining 26% most likely just haven’t discovered the threat yet.

Back in 1991 the Michelangelo virus would infect systems and lay dormant until the birthday of Renaissance artist Michelangelo on March 6th, before erasing a user’s hard drive. It should be no surprise therefore that today’s virus, worms, ransomware or general malware are as smart as they are.

A single piece of malware is most likely sat somewhere on your network today; collecting passwords, copying sensitive data to a server in eastern Europe or perhaps simply waiting for a moment to encrypt your files and resell them to you.

It is perceived by many that big companies are commonly hacked by foreign countries. This is a misconception. The reality of the situation lies in the millions of really smart (and curious) teenagers just looking to figure out systems and networks, how to access, bypass and login for fun. The motivation for these attacks goes beyond making a profit and it would seem that this profile of ‘attacker’ are of the most common variety within the industry today.

Article featured in Insider Magazine October 2016.