Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd revealed that around 90% of organisations of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are risking significant fines and reputational damage through serious IT vulnerabilities and data management weaknesses.
This startling statistic comes from the company’s Managed IT support services, including its free IT Health Check & Data Compliance Assessment, giving a worrying snapshot of the potential dangers to IT security amongst UK organisations.
Francis Thornhill Head of Customer & Solutions Marketing at Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd commented: “Security compliance is a key area of our assessments and whilst some businesses have seen good results, many others are lacking the right protection which is concerning – and 90% had at least one significant gap. Potential liability is an area that no business wants to face. One business we worked with was potentially facing £15 million ($20 million/ €18 million) of fines, whilst another was risking an eye-watering £35 million ($48 million/ €42 million) had it fallen foul of the regulator before making our suggested changes. Yet fines are only really part of the risk to business – the greatest risk is damage to trust and reputation with customers as well as complete business operations failure if systems and data can’t be recovered.”
The data security vulnerabilities can vary from inherent data protection issues (such as insecure storage of financial details including IBAN numbers etc.) through to unsecured personal data, which is vigorously protected under GDPR. Many businesses were also found to lack important software security updates/patches, not only for endpoint hardware but also on servers containing all a business’s core data systems and therefore the ability to maintain key operations.
Jamie Chesterman IT Analyst & Support Manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) Ltd added: “The assessments are carried out by our expert IT Analysts and revealed 60% of customers had inconsistencies with their server management – from Windows patches not up to date through to Servers OS’ being end of life and not supported by Microsoft. We have helped businesses to schedule out-of-hours updates that have minimum impact on customers and employees, but ensure these vital systems are fully secure and running at optimum efficiency.”
Konica Minolta’s findings are amplified by statistics released by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) that reveal 68% of medium-sized UK firms suffered a cyber security breach or attack during the past 12 months.
Konica Minolta’s research identified various reasons for these security issues, including limited resources to keep on top of IT management tasks and a lack of in-house IT capabilities. “Often the person directly in charge of the IT systems fully understands the issues but struggles to convince business leaders of the need for investment to avert potential disasters,” added Jamie.
“As a third-party and totally agnostic expert, our free assessments help to focus the attention away from the anxiety of IT maintenance costs towards the far bigger and worrying costs associated with potential liability and lost productivity through neglecting these essential requirements.”
