Virtually all firms in the UK, but also elsewhere around Europe, have suffered a data breach due to cybersecurity weaknesses in their supply chain. This is according to a new report from cybersecurity experts BlueVoyant.
Surveying more than 1,200 C-suite executives around the world for the report, BlueVoyant found that 97 percent of UK’s businesses suffered a breach through the supply chain, up from 82 percent a year ago.
The only two countries having it worse than the UK at this point are Germany and The Netherlands who, grouped together, have had a 99 percent breach rate.
Successful data breaches have grown in numbers, as well. The number of breaches in the UK, for the past year, grew from 2.64 to 3.57. At the same time, UK firms are experiencing a higher-than-average percentage of breaches (59 percent), suffering anywhere between two and five attacks (compared to the global average of 49 percent). Consequently, the number of firms that only suffered one single breach in the past year fell from 42 percent to 33 percent.
Some of the most devastating attacks to happen in recent times were made possible through the supply chain. A prime example is the SolarWinds data breach, when a weakness in SolarWinds’ systems resulted in the company sending out a compromised software update to tens of thousands of clients.
Still, just a quarter (27 percent) of UK firms see third-party risk as a top priority, compared to the global average of 42 percent.
