Kevin McDermott, senior IT auditor at Wylie & Bisset, said that there is little doubt that the threat landscape is becoming more dangerous for businesses, with phishing scams and attempts to access financial details and, more recently, organisations being breached by hackers who seek to steal personal information to extort money by threatening to trash the organisation’s reputation by making the security breach public.

He said: “As the threat landscape evolves and hackers’ nefarious plans become more sophisticated, the best protection is to always ensure that your cyber protections are as good as they possibly can be and that you have a fully patched and supported network and the best business grade anti-malware and email protection that you can afford.

“But a firm’s first line of defence is its staff. While business owners can pay for third party tools to help with cyber security, the National Cyber Security Centre website also has good training available.

“Enhancing cyber security is not necessarily something that companies need to spend a fortune on. Rather, if they invest time in training staff, that is the first line of defence.”

Free training packs are available on the National Cyber Security Centre website.