• Volume of cyber attacks on UK businesses increased by 179 percent in Q2 2019
• This is the highest level of cyber crime activity since Beaming began analysing attacks in 2016
• One in seven attacks were traced to locations in China

Businesses in the UK were on the receiving end of 146,491 attempted cyber attacks each, on average, in the second quarter of 2019. The current rate of cyber attacks equates to one attack every 50 seconds and is the highest level recorded since Beaming started monitoring attacks in 2016.

The volume of internet-borne cyber attacks identified by Beaming in the three months to the end of June was 179 percent higher than in the same period of 2018, when businesses were attacked online 52,596 times each on average. IoT devices and file sharing services were the most frequently targeted applications, attracting 17,737 and 10,192 attacks respectively between April and June.

Beaming’s cyber security analysts identified 371,080 unique IP addresses used to launch online cyber attacks on UK businesses in the second quarter. While 52,860 of these were traced to locations in China, there was also a large amount of attack activity originating in Taiwan, Brazil, Egypt and the USA.

Beaming’s advice to businesses

Sonia Blizzard, managing director of Beaming, comments: “The rate at which UK businesses are attacked online has soared over the last year and companies large and small are under sustained attack from hackers around the world. The majority of cyber attacks on businesses are indiscriminate, malicious code that trawls the web seeking to exploit any weak point in cyber security systems. A single breach can be catastrophic to those involved.”

“We do lots at a network level to minimise the threat of online attacks, but businesses need to take the threat seriously, educate employees and put in place measures such as managed firewalls to ensure they don’t expose themselves to undue risk. We are spending more time than ever working with customers to help improve their resilience to attack. ”

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