How 2025 became the year of the cyber hacker – and what challenges UK businesses face next

one2025 is about to pass, Business Leaders and executives will find this to be a particularly expensive year as employment costs soar, raw material inflation impacts supply chains, and oil and tariff shocks hit the economy in the first half of the year.

But perhaps the biggest costs among them are being borne by companies hit by the pandemic. cyber attack.

a damn government Report Nearly half of UK businesses (43%) and three in 10 charities (30%) claim to have suffered some kind of cybersecurity breach or attack in the past year. This includes anything in a phishing attack Leading to total digital shutdown, costing hundreds of millions of pounds.

Affected businesses include some of the UK’s largest businesses.

Marks & Spencer. Adidas. Cooperative Group. Heathrow Airport. Harrods department store. certainly, Jaguar Land Rover (Jaguar Land Rover). Everyone has suffered a publicly confirmed cyber hack. These attacks are not limited to companies: the German parliament was also breached, and in October, the British government was also breached. See the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hacked.

Organizations must contend with an ever-changing target, one with seemingly unlimited capabilities. This is not an enemy of business that you can kill and run away with – cyberattacks come in all different ways, from all corners of the planet, and if one try doesn’t work, it will keep happening.

Jason Soroko, a cybersecurity expert and host of the Root Causes podcast, said bluntly: “2025 will be brutal for cyberattacks. 2026 will be worse.”

What does it cost to hack?

Attackers don’t just want to break into a digital vault and withdraw cash. Data becomes extremely valuable, and damage to the economy or manufacturing operations can provide opportunities for others to pick up the slack in demand, meaning national-level involvement is sometimes part of the problem.

In fact, for businesses, lost sales are only part of the problem – there’s reputational damage, possible lost reimbursements or opportunity costs, loss of existing customers to competitors, and, obviously, the cost of fixing and upgrading one’s own systems to consider.

Cybersecurity Ventures is the leading source of data and research in cybersecurity, explain This year alone the entire “industry” is worth around $10.5 trillion (£7.8 trillion). Nationally, this would make it the world’s third-largest economy after the United States and China.

For individual companies, reliance is placed on their publicly available accounting estimates. M&S initially said their profits would take a hit of around £300m, but in November The figure given is slightly less than halfrecovering £100 million in insurance payouts.

Jaguar Land Rover is not so lucky as they have not specifically renewed their cyber insurance, meaning they will bear the brunt of the Estimated cost: £200m. at the same time, Co-op cyber attack More than 6 million customer data stolen, final tally It is expected to cost around £120 million.

Elsewhere, the “costs” are harder to calculate, but broader and potentially damaging.

Jaguar Land Rover’s shutdown was large enough and long enough to cause a recession: the industry’s failure to rebound in September and October was a major factor in UK GDP contracting by 0.1% in the latter month.

The biggest problems and why businesses are in trouble

There are several good reasons why companies fail to stop cybercrime.

Attacks can be multi-pronged in style or timing, and have the advantage of pre-emption: defenders must rely on observing the attacker’s behavior and react accordingly.

“Adversaries are now deploying artificial intelligence at a rate that defenders simply cannot match. This asymmetry is growing month by month. Defenders have been slow to adopt stronger authentication, which is like failing to lock the door better. Attackers are taking advantage of that,” explained Mr. Soroko, who works for the online security firm Sectigo.

Meanwhile, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that “the frequency of ransomware attacks targeting governments, enterprises, consumers and devices will continue to rise.” […] By 2031, there will be one impact every two seconds. “

There’s a lot to stop at – and that’s just the digital version.

What happens when humans get involved? we know People get caught in scams Via SMS, email, etc. Why should work be any different for ordinary people?

Tim Rawlins, security director at networking company NCC Group, explains: “We are currently seeing young people social engineering their way into global enterprises. After conducting online research and exploiting other vulnerabilities to obtain information, a simple call to the help desk can be enough to convince them to reset their password or MFA token.”

“This opens the door for criminals to move across systems and escalate their access until they have the same level of access as the IT team.”

What happens next is crucial.

Notably, the Co-op chose to pull the plug, shutting out those who would hack them, but also limiting their own ability to initially respond because it was deemed the safest course of action.

The government’s cyber report points out that even the largest companies don’t actually have a set course of action in the event of an attack: 53% of mid-sized businesses and 75% of large businesses “have an incident response plan in place,” according to the report.

“After a breach, organizations cannot automatically remediate,” Rollins added. “Organizations must work with cyber experts to securely rebuild systems; understand how hackers penetrated, what they accessed, and how vulnerabilities impact business-critical systems.”

But this is a broad topic, a completely new area for many businesses, and one that requires a high degree of expertise. As a result, many people remain unprepared to deal with this issue.

Research from compliance firm IO shows that a third of UK and US companies feel the government is not doing enough to support and protect them.

What’s the next big risk?

The pace of technological change means businesses face a host of “same but different” problems. Hackers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities, individuals inadvertently opening or accessing files, and even outside or third-party contributors accidentally letting outsiders in have all been part of the problem this year.

Companies essentially have to defend against threats they can’t see, and there’s no way to tell when an attacker might consider a particular target to be a desirable target.

Global ratings firm Moody’s said cyberattacks on banks are “increasing and becoming more sophisticated”. If you thought it was bad that you couldn’t order click and collect from M&S for a few months, try to imagine not being able to pay, withdraw cash or check your balance.

Happily, they did note that most banks have “robust defences”, although those financial institutions that use technology infrastructure “developed decades ago” and simply build new applications and processes on top of it do pose ongoing concerns.

In short, it’s a race to keep your security systems updated toward a finish line you’ll never see. For some businesses over the next year, the question will inevitably turn at some stage to what is the best method of containment rather than how to keep attackers at bay. Once a defense is breached, the answer to this question can be a difference worth millions of dollars.