Craft Focus - Dec/Jan (Issue 76)

Business crime is too often overlooked but in reality, it’s a huge problem for small firms. Quite incredibly 2.54 million small companies are estimated to have experienced at least one incident of business crime over the course of the last two years. This includes almost 10,000 cyber-attacks a day on small firms. Our latest research shows that one in five small businesses say a cyber- attack has been committed against their business in the two years to January 2019. More than seven million individual attacks were reported over the same period, equating to 9,741 incidents a day. Of those smaller businesses suffering from cybercrime the most common of the attacks is phishing attempts, malware and fraudulent payments requests. With the annual cost of these attacks to the small business community estimated to be £3.75billion, it’s clear there’s a real need for meaningful steps to be taken to safeguard our small firms, and the wider economy. Smaller businesses are being proactive and taking action to protect themselves against cybercrime, with around nine in 10 small businesses in England and Wales having invested in at least one cyber resilience measure to protect their business. However, smaller businesses need more support to tackle the problem – particularly as it is seen as one of the top three types of crime that small businesses classify as being most disruptive to their business. These findings demonstrate the sheer scale of the dangers faced by small firms every day in the digital arena. But it’s not just cybercrime that impacts small businesses. One in three smaller firms in England and Wales has been victim of at least one ‘traditional’ business crime over 2017 and 2018. This equates to about 1.79 million businesses every year. The most common of these are robbery and burglary, theft and criminal damage. Evolving threat Thankfully, more small firms are waking up to the threat of cybercrime. It’s a threat that’s evolving rapidly but unfortunately too many small businesses still lack access to the resources and budgets needed to contain it.  As a result the FSB is calling on the government to do more to tackle the issue by enhancing the current policing response – including investing more in cyber upskilling for police personnel as part of its wider recruitment push. While we were pleased to see the announced investment in 20,000 new police officers at the Spending Review earlier this year, this should be a starting point – there’s far more work to do to increase the number of police in England and Wales up to the EU average per 100,000 people. There’s also a discussion to be had about whether tackling cyber threats should be handled entirely by specialists at the regional or national level, rather than local constabularies, building on the work of the National Crime Agency.   We also believe banks have a role to play and should be building in as much resilience as possible into banking and payments systems and made liable for the losses of business customers when they fall victim to cybercrime. Software providers need to continue to do more to make products more cyber-secure, building in resilience and reducing the resilience for the customer. It’s vital that many more small businesses take the exciting step into the digital world, and working together on these key points will help us to get there in a safer environment. Protecting your business Of course, for a busy small business owner, finding information on how to protect you and your company on crime prevention matters can be costly and time consuming. The FSB has works hard to make sure our members can easily access advice and offer specialist helplines with access to experts, insurance protection, as well as access to data and cyber information online. Along with use of our advice lines, we offer access to online information on a variety of data and cyber security matters such as ‘how to respond to a ransomware attack’ and ‘what to do if a laptop is stolen’ along with security policy templates and guidelines. ABOUT FSB FSB offers members a wide range of vital business services, including access to finance, business banking, legal advice and support along with a powerful voice in Government. Each year FSB also runs the UK’s Celebrating Small Business Awards. More information is available at fsb.org.uk . You can follow us on twitter @fsb_policy and on Instagram @fsb_uk. “Quite incredibly 2.54 mil lion smal l businesses are estimated to have experienced at least one incident of business crime over the course of the last two years. This includes almost 10,000 cyber-attacks a day on smal l f irms. Our latest research shows that one in f ive smal l businesses say a cyber-attack has been committed against their business in the two years to January 2019” 90