Cyber security – how to protect your business

We look at the complex world of cyber security and show that even simple steps can make your business better protected from malicious forces.

What do the following companies all have in common: Marks and Spencer; H&M; the Co-Op; Jaguar Land Rover; Harrods; Hyundai; and Adidas?
The answer is: they have all fallen victim to cyberattacks in 2025.

According to the UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024, 74% of large enterprises faced cyber incidents last year. But cyber criminals don’t just prey on multi-national, multi-billion pound businesses: 70% of medium businesses and 50% of UK small businesses identified a cyberattack in 2024, and around one in four UK small businesses actually experienced a cybercrime.

“No business is too small to be a target,” The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre proclaims.
For FESPA members – who have the three-pronged problem of dealing with their own business data and technology, as well as that of their suppliers and customers – cyber security is of paramount importance.

Therefore, we have brought together some of the key issues you need to consider when addressing your company’s own cyber security, and what to do if it is ever breached.

A business’s cyber health is equivalent to an individual’s personal health in at least one regard: prevention is better than cure. The more you do to protect your business’s data, the less likely you are to face a massive cyberattack.

To that end, an easy first step is to use the NCSC’s free online Cyber Action Toolkit. The toolkit has been designed especially for small businesses, is easy to start and follow, and guides you through some important personalised actions that combine to form a layer of protection around your business.

Such actions aren’t necessarily complicated. Almost 25 years ago, British computer hacker Gary McKinnon broke into NASA and the US military’s IT systems simply by looking for accounts with blank or default passwords. It would be nice to think that things have changed since then, but cyber criminals still use easily identifiable or compromised passwords to gain easy access.

If your password is overly simple, or if it has been identified in any other data breach, change it immediately. In fact, as much of a nuisance as it may seem, regularly changing your password is a good habit to get into.

Incidentally, a…