Cyber attacks are very common, and there are many different scams being used to get hold of your information and money. Scams are in fact becoming extremely sophisticated. Last year, in the UK alone, consumers lost a total of £824.8 million from “unauthorised fraud” where the account holder would have not even provided any authorisation on a transaction and £455.8m authorised scams where account holders would have authorised a payment to another account controlled by a fraudster.

Cyber attacks also happen to insurance companies where the most common cyber incidents are phishing mail, malware infections (ransomware), data exfiltration and denial of service attack. As such, email is often the weakest link in the security chain and it has been estimated that more than 90% of cyber-attacks worldwide have been launched by an email.

At Island Insurance, we are constantly raising awareness amongst our people about the importance of cybersecurity encouraging them to avoid clicking on phishing links, downloading phishing attachments and to dispose of phishing or suspicious email securely. In fact, in line with our constant efforts to keep cybersecurity on top of our agenda, our own internal IT departments regularly run extended phishing tests amongst all the staff to ensure that all employees remain alert and updated with the latest phishing tactics used by scammers and fraudsters.

Only by ensuring to never let our guard down and having the resources needed to be safer and more secure online can we protect ourselves. After all, if we are protected we can also protect our customers better!