Cyber attacks have been ranked as a top business issue in the next 12 months, but UK firms are facing paralysis in the face of increasingly advanced methods of cyber crime, according to a new study.

A global survey of 2,256 decision-makers from multiple industry sectors by digital security firm NTT, found that more than half (54 per cent) of UK respondents said that cyber attack was one of the top three issues that could affect their business in the coming year, ranking it as second only to the risk of ‘economic or financial crisis’ (56 per cent).

The risk of a cyber attack that threatens critical infrastructure - such as the banking, health, telecoms or energy sectors - was a major concern for 44 per cent of UK businesses.

However, despite a recognition of the increasing frequency of cyber attacks, a third of UK firms said they would rather pay ransom to a hacker than invest more in security, because it would be cheaper – a significant rise of 12 per cent over last year.

In addition, 34 per cent said they would rather pay a ransom to a hacker than get a fine for non-compliance of data regulations.

The loss of company data is also an increasing concern, with 58 per cent of UK organisations saying that robust cyber security controls would allow them to ‘ensure the integrity of their data’, including the 56 per cent who said they aimed to ‘ensure only the right people have access’ to their organisation’s data.

Just 30 per cent of companies globally believe they are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a year on from the deadline, despite it affecting all organisations that have operations or customers in any European Union member state. The UK’s awareness of GDPR was a more respectable 48 per cent, however it lagged behind Spain (55 per cent) and Italy (50 per cent).

In 2019, 60 per cent of UK organisations had an incident response plan in place in the event of a security breach, way above the global average (52 per cent) but marking a three per cent drop on last year’s figures for cyber response.

The annual NTT survey also showed developing economies, including India, pulling ahead of the UK in terms of preparedness for a cyber attack, while on a year-by-year basis the performance of organisations in France, Germany and Singapore worsened, as has the performance of the financial services, telecommunications, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas and private healthcare sectors – placing doubt on the robustness of critical national infrastructure.

In addition, around half (44 per cent) of UK organisations believed that cybersecurity “is the IT department’s problem and not the wider business”.

Azeem Aleem, vice president consulting at NTT Security, said: “The introduction of new regulations, integration of new technologies and fast-paced digital transformation projects [are] changing the way we work.

“What’s concerning though is that organisations seem to have come to a standstill in their journey to cyber security best practice – and it’s particularly worrying to see UK businesses falling behind in some critical areas like incident response planning.”

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