Top companies in Britain not prepared for cyber attacks, gov't report warns

LONDON, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- Two thirds of bosses in Britain's biggest businesses are not trained to deal with a cyber attack, a British government report revealed on Monday.

The British Department for Digital, Culture. Media and Sport (DCMS) said the country's top firms and charities urgently need to do more to protect themselves from online threats.

The plea has been issued on the basis of government research and a "cyber health check" report published on Monday.
The new report highlighted scale of the cyber security and data protection challenge, showing one in ten FTSE 350 companies operate without a response plan for a cyber incident.

It also disclosed that just six percent of businesses are completely prepared for new data protection rules.
Separate new research found charities are as also susceptible to attacks as businesses.

A survey, undertaken in the wake of recent high-profile cyber attacks, found 68 percent of boards of directors at 350 of Britain's biggest companies had not received training to deal with a cyber incident, despite 54 percent saying cyber threats were a top risk to their business.

One in ten FTSE 350 companies said they operated without a response plan for a cyber incident, while less than a third of boards received comprehensive cyber risk information.

The British minister of state for digital, Matt Hancock, said, "We have world leading businesses and a thriving charity sector but recent cyber attacks have shown the devastating effects of not getting our approach to cyber security right."

"These new reports show we have a long way to go until all our organisations are adopting best practice and I urge all senior executives to work with the National Cyber Security Center and take up the government's advice and training," he said.

Hancock noted that there has been progress in some areas when compared with a health check last year, with more than half of company boards now setting out their approach to cyber risks (53 percent up from 33 per cent). More than half of businesses now have a clear understanding of the impact of a cyber attack (57 percent up from 49 percent).

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the DCMS said, "The government is fully committed to defending against cyber threats and a five-year National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) was announced in November 2016, supported by 1.9 billion pounds (2.5 billion U.S. dollars) of transformational investment."

The government has also just issued a directive outlining proposals on how to help essential industries be more resilient to cyber threats.