British businesses and individuals report a suspicious email or website every five seconds in 2022, a new report from GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC).
Report reveals 7.1 million suspicious emails and URLs reported by UK organizations through NCSC’s free suspicious email reporting service (SERS). Between January 2022 and December 2022 – the equivalent of approximately 20,000 reports per day.
the reports Contribute to the direct removal of nearly a quarter of a million (235,000) malicious URLs from the Internet by the NCSC since the launch of SERS – the first service of its kind globally – in April 2020.
It took an average of less than 6 hours for the NCSC to remove reported malicious URLs from the Internet.
This discovery is one of many ideas in Sixth Annual Report from Active Cyber Defense (ACD)NCSC’s cornerstone programme, which takes a ‘whole of society’ approach to cybercrime and prevents millions of high-profile cyber attacks from reaching UK organizations and citizens each year.
Responding to the report, Swede Adyango, CEO, said, River Seif He said: “These figures reveal the tidal wave of cyberattacks hitting businesses on a daily basis and show why so much more needs to be done to ramp up the UK’s cyber defences. A chronic skills gap, challenges around the recruitment pathway and a general lack of cyber awareness across businesses mean That these threats will continue to make their mark Addressing this problem requires concerted efforts, as academic institutions, companies and the government develop a radical plan to completely transform the country’s cyber strategy.
“This means urgently engaging the next generation and becoming aware of the Internet from a young age, delivering upskilling and reskilling programs across organizations, and most importantly driving diversity and growth in the online job market,” added Adyango.
“In a Hydra-like cyber threat environment—stop an attack, pop another in its place—ACD once again does an unparalleled job of preserving the nation’s security,” said Jonathan Ellison, director of the National Center for National Security, National Resilience, and Future Technology.
As this latest report demonstrates, cybersecurity is not the preserve of technology professionals: companies are increasingly alive and eager to address the cyber risks they face, and sign up for swathes to make the most of NCSC’s data and expertise.
“Small businesses play a key role in making working and living online safer, which is why we’re making it easy for them to bolster their defenses with free, accessible tools and soon, to easily manage these through our integrated MyNCSC platform.”
The growing corporate appetite for cybersecurity in 2022 has led to 39% of organizations signing up for free ACD services designed to empower users without specialized knowledge or a dedicated security function at work to enhance their cyber resilience.
Small businesses make up 99% of the UK business ecosystem and are therefore indispensable to national prosperity. However, they also face a unique set of behavioral barriers, financial pressures, and competing priorities for achieving robust cyber security, and often do not have the expertise or dedicated resources to give cyber due consideration.