Businesses across the South are being urged to remain ultra vigilant in the face of an onslaught of cyberattacks. The main takeaway from a cyber security seminar held in Hampshire for owners, business leaders and decision-makers is that cyber threats are here to stay – ignore them at your peril.

Three regional businesses – HWB Chartered Accountants, Lloyds Bank and Gallagher Insurance & Risk Management – combined to stage the breakfast event at the Axis Centre in Southampton to impart their cyber security advice.

Keynote speaker was Sam Cheshire, Head of Cyber at Gallagher, whose talk covered cyber threat intelligence, cloud security, artificial intelligence in cybersecurity, data, protection and privacy. He said:

“There were 7.78 million cyberattacks on UK businesses in 2024 – the vast majority being social engineering attacks – but just 15% of businesses have a formal incident management plan that is cyber centric. The average annual cost of cybercrime to businesses is £15,300, yet only 30% of all organisations use monitoring tools to spot a malicious attacker on their network."

“However, the real cost of an attack can be to a company’s hard-earned reputation – especially if there is business interruption or large amounts of sensitive customer data are collected – which can take years to rebuild, if at all.”

Sam, whose firm offers a comprehensive range of cyber insurance policies, said the current ransomware epidemic began after the Covid-19 pandemic and by 2023 cyber incidents were ranked the number one global business risk for the first time.

He also covered common cyber risk misconceptions, such as the businesses who thought they didn’t need insurance as they invested in IT security or outsourced their IT. There were also those who considered themselves too small to be targeted or felt cyber was covered under their standard insurance.

Michaela Johns, Director at HWB Chartered Accountants, based at Chandler’s Ford, near Southampton, said:

“Business owners and directors must remain vigilant at all times to prevent them from becoming a sad statistic. It is especially important to maintain year-round protection as most attacks happen on major holiday dates such as Easter Sunday and Christmas Day when businesses may have taken their eye off the ball. The most common cyberattack at the moment is invoice redirection."

“It is vital that businesses have an incident management plan that is cyber centric, and I was staggered to learn that just 15% of UK businesses have this in place. The most paid out insurance claims are to manufacturing businesses who need to be able to get their machines unlocked in order to continue production, but charities are also a common target as they are perceived to have weaker systems."

Michaela has provided a six-point checklist of cyber security advice to help businesses in the ongoing fight against cyberattacks.

•  Update your incident management plan:

•  Ensure all staff are fully trained to spot scams and phishing

•  Invest in cyber resilience measures

•  Check your cyber insurance covers incident response and that they provide a system vulnerability scan for you

•  Have offline back ups

•  Consider multi factor authentication (MFA) on emails and all remote application.

John Turner, of Lloyds Bank, added:

“Cyberattacks are not going away and form the biggest threat to many of our valued customers. We wanted to give something back to the community in which we live and work, and this seminar has helped raise awareness of the multiple issues surrounding this subject and some of the actions to take to combat them.”

The Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Home Office revealed that 43% of UK businesses (approximately 612,000) and 30% of UK charities (61,000) identified a cyber breach or attack in the past year.

The survey, published in June, also shows that the prevalence of cyber breaches and attacks in medium and large businesses remains high (67% medium and 74% large) with micro businesses at 35% and small businesses 42%.

Photo: Safety First - Combining for a cyber security seminar in Southampton were, from left, William Gage (Lloyds Bank), John Turner (Lloyds Bank), Sam Cheshire (Gallagher), Charlotte Powney (Gallagher), Michaela Johns (HWB)