The volume of cyber attacks experienced by UK businesses declined by 2% in the third quarter of 2020, despite signs of increasing cybercrime activity from China, India and Egypt, according to our analysis.

On average, businesses were subjected to 176,206 attacks each over the summer, the equivalent of 80 attacks an hour or one every 45 seconds. IoT devices such as networked printers and security cameras, file-sharing applications and company databases were the most frequent targets.

Beaming’s analysts identified 349,575 unique IP addresses used in attacks on UK businesses between July and September. 49,303 of these were traced to locations in China, an increase of 34% on the 36,842 recorded during the second quarter of 2020. The ISP also identified increasing numbers of attacking IP addresses located in India (up 159% to 24,149) and Egypt (up 192% to 20,619).

Sonia Blizzard, managing director of Beaming, comments: “Malicious cyber activity remained at exceptionally high levels over the summer, with UK companies experiencing an online attack every 45 seconds on average. With millions of employees still working from home, the risk of human or technological failures leading to serious breaches is now higher than ever.”

“Small and medium sized businesses can boost their resilience to cyber attacks by investing in employee training and following their larger counterparts in adopting more sophisticated cybersecurity technologies such as two-factor authentication, network perimeter firewalls and private dedicated networks.”