BUSINESSES in Swindon were warned of the increasing threat from Cybercrime for the second Business Wise meeting.

Benjamin Johns, Cyber protect, prepare & prevent officer at the South West regional Cyber Crime Unit, told the Adver: “What we want to say it yes, the larger organisations can be hit and they can be detrimental, but equally small, medium-sized organisations, even start-ups, anybody can be affected by cybercrime.

“What we’ve been seeing threat-wise in the last 3-4 months is there’s been a massive increase, especially in phishing scams and CEO fraud cases where someone will try and impersonate someone higher up.”

Hackers can gain access to funds simply by using spoof e-mail address of a senior member of staff by creating a domain name which looks very similar to the real one used. They then contact the finance department with a new invoice to transfer funds into bank accounts.

“That’s generally what we’re looking at, it’s usually a case of manipulating someone into thinking it’s legitimate.

“When we bring up the message of cybercrime it’s often though of as a technical subject, like IT managers or experts, but it isn’t, it can be done by anybody.

“It’s a case of hacking a person, rather than a computer.”

“So what we want to say when we speak to business owners is to make them aware of these threats but how they can implement very simple measures to protect themselves to.”

Malware and Ransom ware does tend to exploit gaps in old versions of software

Jerry Thornton, chair of the Business Wise group, said: “It’s a subject of concern that we’re all aware of and we need to strengthen our business.

“The evening and presentation was excellent, and pin pointed the key areas that we all need to focus more on. For those that came it was a real benefit.

“The key thing for me was password security. If they can get that then there it and that’s it basically. For small business, if you have a data breach, it could be very expensive. It’s not a joke.

Business Wise is an independent not-for-profit business referral group that meets every three months in Swindon to bring members together, share information, and build a trusted business network.