Last June, American book publisher Macmillan was hit by a suspected ransomware attack that forced it to shut down its IT systems. Staff were told to work from home and, for a time, orders could not be processed.
Macmillan’s Erin Coffey described it to TechCrunch as a “security incident” that “involved the encryption of certain files on our network”.
Last December, the Guardian was also hit by a cyberattack, which reportedly accessed personal employee data. Staff were forced to work from home for a number of weeks.
Guardian Media Group CEO Anna Bateson said: “These attacks have become more frequent and sophisticated in the past three years, against organisations of all sizes, and kinds, in all countries.”
Similarly, earlier this month, WH Smith revealed that it too had been hit by a cyberattack which had impacted current and former staff members.
The lesson is that cybercriminals are constantly prowling, looking for any chinks in companies’ security chains, to gain entry, to steal sensitive data, deny service or lock business-critical files before extorting money.
According to the ‘Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022’ published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport last July, “in the last 12 months, 39% of UK businesses identified a cyber attack… of those, the most common threat vector was phishing attempts (83%). Of the 39%, around one in five (21%) identified a more sophisticated attack type such as a denial of service, malware, or ransomware attack. Despite its low prevalence, organisations cited ransomware as a major threat, with 56% of businesses having a policy not to pay ransoms.”
In the current issue of InPublishing magazine, in an article looking at some of the tech challenges facing publishers, Jim Bilton wrote: “data security and dealing with cybercrime is now a serious (and really scary) issue which can destroy a business overnight.”
Overnight! The threat is that serious. Publishing companies – large and small – must make sure they are protected.
The good news is that there is a whole host of practical steps they can take. Cybersecurity and what publishers should be doing to protect themselves, is the subject of our next webinar, on Tuesday. Attendees will come away armed with an extensive checklist of things they need to do. For more information and to register, please click here.
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
