Cybersecurity

The founder of Censornet has warned that the increasing ferocity and volume of cyber-attacks is putting businesses at risk.

Ed Macnair, CEO at the Basingstoke-headquartered firm, highlighted the increasing prevalence of cross-channel attacks in the COVID-19 pandemic.

His company serves more than 1,500 customers globally – including Fever-Tree, the National Portrait Gallery, Hallmark Hotels and Thatchers Cider – via a platform which integrates attack intelligence across email, web and cloud.

“Most organisations used to view cyber security as a ‘tick box’ exercise, largely because they felt detached from the threat,” he tells BusinessCloud. 

“However, in the last couple of years, we’ve seen a phenomenal rise in ransomware and phishing attacks. Cybersecurity has naturally become a much more tangible risk. 

“It’s the increased volume and ferocity of attacks that is forcing more organisations to take a closer look at their cybersecurity defences.”

IT must remain a boardroom priority

Censornet claims to bring enterprise-grade security to mid-market clients, and that its ‘autonomous security’ technology ensures their cyber defences can react immediately day and night.

“Cyber-attack responses that are autonomous are more powerful than automated responses. Automation puts the cyber response on autopilot. It’s like the web, email, and cloud defences are on cruise control – stopping the expected attacks,” he explains. 

“Where companies gain better cyber protection is when we talk about autonomous cyber security – the ability to not just respond on autopilot but to react to unexpected kinks in the threat. 

“It’s this deep machine learning, the ability to identify and stop threats that enter an organisation by email first and then web or cloud to form a multi-channel cyberattack, that saves the IT team from a time-consuming process of having to investigate minor alerts or false positives.”

As UK FinTech hits record levels, who are the next wave of scaleups?

Even in 2021, most cyber threats come in via email, meaning it’s important to have robust email security in place, along with strong web and cloud application security. 

“Threats are permuting too – a threat that may first be identified in an email may subsequently appear through the web or cloud application channel,” says Macnair.

“This is why every business now needs a solution that can effectively manage cross-channel attacks. If a business operating today doesn’t have an integrated solution that covers the whole piece — email, web, cloud— then it is effectively leaving itself vulnerable.”