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Why Data Breaches Are a Growing Threat to London Businesses?

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Why Data Breaches Are a Growing Threat to London Businesses?

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Most citizens and businesses in London go about their daily lives without really knowing or caring about the growing threat of data breaches. However, it is a real threat and one that is now forcing authorities to take a closer look at how to combat it.

After a recent request via the Freedom of Information act, it was discovered that 64 percent of the London boroughs had dealt with some form of a data breach over the previous 4-year period. That is a real danger to digital assets and one that seems to be getting larger every year.

This is not just a threat for local businesses but for the citizens that live in the city and surrounding boroughs. It can be devastating to have your personal information compromised and it some cases it may take years to recover from such a breach.

Although the UK is working on new legislation that is designed to help in protecting its citizens, the country is still way behind and seldom in front of such threats. In many cases, authorities end up in a reactionary mode versus a proactive one.

Unfortunately, hackers are becoming more and more advanced and they are gaining both new skills and new tools that continue to threaten our security on levels that were not seen in the past decade. These threats must be taken seriously as they can cause serious harm, however, there are threats out there that are not completely noticeable at first and can go undetected for a while. For example, fraud can be happening at any point which will cause multiple problems for a business, that is why using services like Castle.io can aid in stopping this and create a safer platform to work from.

According to a report on IT security that was released by Cisco, organizations that were subject to breaches routinely lost up to 20% or more of their revenue as a result. That is a substantial loss for any business and one that would clearly have an impact on the company.


One of the ways to protect your company against such threats is to reach out to IT pros like Prosyn, a company offering IT support in London. Such service companies can help you to develop a plan before a breach happens and provide tips on how to best avoid them. Alternatively, another method of securing your business is by desensitizing personal information to reduce the risk of a data leak as there would be no information for hackers to access. To learn more about privacy compliance for businesses, it might be worth visiting TokenEx to see if their software could be helpful.

Cisco also points out in their report that the UK is far behind other countries such as Mexico and India when it comes to cyber security. In one situation, 20,000 customers of Tesco bank had their money stolen after a cyber-attack.

As the threat rises, so does the pressure put on authorities and politicians to do something about it. Beginning in May of 2018, the new European General Data Protection Regulation will govern UK data protection. In addition to much stricter regulations, the GDPR has the ability to levy substantial fines on groups that suffered breaches. This is just one of several steps the government is taking to alleviate some of the dangers associated with breakdowns in security.

Andy McGowan
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