The attack on the taxi firm Uber, which recently admitted that details of 57 million customers and drivers worldwide were stolen by hackers, follows a number of high profile data breaches this year. Examples of businesses include the NHS, which was held hostage by hackers, causing more than 6,900 appointments, including some operations, to be cancelled.

Data theft has become big business. Either stealing it, or locking it and charging a fee for its release. And it would be easy to sit back and think your business is too small to be targeted but unfortunately you can no longer be that complacent.

But it’s not just about data. It’s also about trust. When data is stolen from a company that a person deals with, it breaches their trust in that business. Trust is won slowly and lost quickly which makes it is essential that your company minimises any risk.  

Additionally, it will also be about the law. The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, comes into effect from May next year, giving individuals a greater level of control over their personal data. This means that all companies who hold any customer information will be subject to strict rules and penalties for this kind of data breach will become much more severe.

Whilst the full details of what happened with the Uber hack have yet to be revealed, we know that typically hackers get into a system through one of a number of ways:

• By phishing: Staff accidentally allowing hackers into your IT system, perhaps by clicking a malicious link or pdf in an email.
• By neglect: Operating systems and software quickly getting out-of-date, or haven’t had the latest security patches updated.
• By accident: Accidental loss of data by a member of staff, such as leaving a USB stick or laptop on a train.

As part of Net Technical Solutions’ service offering, we help our clients to protect themselves from attacks to their data and IT systems through a proactive and comprehensive layered approach to IT Security.

If you want to avoid seeing your business suffer the reputational and profit damage that Uber is about to suffer, now is the time to conduct an extensive security audit on your network.

Our IT support and services team has a wealth of experience and knowledge and can advise and guide you through the process of analysing, selecting and installing the right security products for your business. We can help you to protect your data and keep your business running with the peace of mind that your IT security is in safe hands.

For further information on any aspect of data security or to book a security audit, please contact your account manager on 01252 235 235 or sales@ntsols.com today.