UK Firms Hit by One Attack Every 47 Seconds Over Summer

Cyber-attacks targeting UK firms are back on the increase, reaching a rate of one every 47 seconds over the summer, according to new data from Beaming.

The business ISP had noted a 9% year-on-year drop in the second quarter, but it now appears that was a temporary blip. Attacks increased 4% between July and September over the same period last year.

The firm claimed that this amounts to an average of 168,975 attacks per company in the third quarter or 1837 per day.

IoT applications and systems attracted the most compromise attempts, amounting to 162 per day, while attempts to breach web applications increased by 21% to reach 48 per day on average.

Beaming has been recording attack traffic patterns since 2016, and Q2’s decline was the first since 2018. However, that now seems to have been merely a slight interruption of the general upward trend in attacks.

Beaming managing director, Sonia Blizzard, urged companies to remain vigilant as they transition to new hybrid working practices.

“More people are accessing company data and IT systems via personal devices and unmanaged domestic internet connections, and more data is flowing beyond traditional business boundaries that could be protected with a simple firewall,” she explained.

“There is plenty that specialist ISPs like Beaming can do to reduce the risk, but businesses need to get serious about cybersecurity too and build resilience through a combination of training, technology and documented policies.”

Her company identified over 260,000 unique IP addresses used to launch attacks on UK firms during the period, tracking a plurality of them (41,175) to China, 22,894 to the US and 16,020 to Brazil. However, that’s no indication that attacks were actually controlled from these countries, merely that compromised PCs from these locations were used.

In a study over the summer, more than half (54%) of senior executives admitted they’re struggling to adapt security policies to keep up with changes to working practices and the threat landscape.