Over half of organisations were impacted by cyber threats in the past 12 months with a significant number of incidents leading to job losses, according to research by Databarracks. Of 500 UK IT, resilience and cyber security professionals surveyed, 37% reported that cyber attacks resulted in dismissals.

Last year’s Databarracks’ data health check found that cyber attacks are organisation’s leading cause of downtime and data loss and figures suggest that that remains the case in 2024.
Data lost to cyber incidents varies greatly by company size, with larger businesses five times more likely to be impacted. Such firms are also much more likely to come under attack, according to the research.

Chris Butler, resilience director at Databarracks, said: “It should come as little surprise that cyber remains organisations’ leading cause of downtime and data loss. The real news is that cyber is now having a significant impact on employees.

“Over a third of those surveyed in the data health check report job losses as a result of cyber attacks. These could be IT or security staff being dismissed in direct response to the breach, or wider layoffs from business disruption. Cyber attacks on businesses are often seen as victimless crimes because losses are covered by insurance. These results show that attacks have a personal impact.”

Butler added that IT teams are faced with significantly more risk and threats to the continuity of their organisations, which can have a profound impact on their wellbeing, but points out that the same can be said for employees right across a business. He said: “Staff may be uncertain about what an attack means for the future of their company, and by extension their own job security. Your first line of defence is your staff, and so it is crucial that they are kept well-trained and appropriately informed in the event of an incident.”

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