Scotland's Urgent Call: Protecting Businesses Against Soaring Cyber Threats

Scottish businesses of all sizes must become extra-vigilant of existential threats to their IT systems. The warning from two of Scotland’s top entrepreneurs comes as accounting firm BDO’s latest FraudTrack report revealed the amount of fraud committed in the UK more than doubled to £2.3 billion last year, with an increase in the use of technology expanding the scale, reach and impact of cyber-enabled crime.

Sir Tom Hunter said: “The amount of scam emails is up 50% on last year, with companies suffering from phishing in particular. Where are these bad actors operating? They’re in China, Russia and even in North Korea, sitting in dark rooms somewhere, and they’re also in the UK. So, every business should thoroughly check its procedures and cybersecurity.”

"Be cynical and be paranoid because these hackers are always two steps ahead." - Sir Tom Hunter

His warning comes as the National Cyber Security Centre said many people would struggle to identify phishing messages – where users are tricked into handing over passwords or personal details – due to the increasing sophistication of new Artificial Intelligence tools.

Speaking on their Go Radio Business Show, fellow entrepreneur Lord Willie Haughey noted: “It’s interesting we’ve just had an announcement about the breakthrough the NCA and the FBI have had in disrupting the work of Lock bit.”

One of the most prolific and dominant ransomware operators globally, Lock bit is known to have hacked some of the world’s largest corporate organisations in recent months. It makes money by stealing sensitive data then threatening to leak the information if its victims fail to pay an often-extortionate ransom.

"Scammers were taking something like $450 million from people and were only starting. So well done to the authorities. Anyone who thinks that was a big amount, trust me, it was a good thing for everybody the scammers got stopped in their tracks before anything even worse could happen." - Lord Willie Haughey

Sir Tom concluded: “After being updated by our own cybersecurity specialists, I said to my team at West Coast Capital: ‘Be cynical and be paranoid because these hackers are always two steps ahead.’”