Page 1557 - Xmo Strata - Bulletin Archive

Health, Safety, Security & Environmental Bulletin No 583

31 August 2017

Cyber-crime

Our weekly bulletins usually focus on the physical health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, customers and
sub-contractors because we don’t want anyone working for us, or with us to be hurt; this value will never change
and over the last 15 years has not only strengthened, but has been very well supported by the more informed and
responsible clients that we work with.

As well as the issue of people being hurt and the effect that can have on their friends, families and work
colleagues, the HSE estimate the cost of workplace injury and illness to be more than £14 billion per year.

Whilst this is a huge cost, that is largely preventable there are bigger financial costs than this to businesses and
our latest initiative is designed to protect us and our clients against one of those.

In 2016, it is estimated that cyber-crime cost UK Businesses alone more than £29 billion, with Social
Engineering, Shoulder Surfing, Phishing, Hacking, Phreaking, Malware, Trojan Horses, Malvertising and
Ransomware Cryptolocker all being common ways of exercising it.

We have an IT partner (Business Computer Systems) that constantly monitors the security of our IT systems, use
DNS filtering, maintain our antivirus software and they advise that our security is as strong as is reasonably
practicable, BUT there are things that our employees can do to prevent cyber-crime and we have worked with
BCS to develop a training course with that objective.

With 360 million hacking attempts per year and 173,000 reported cases of shoulder surfing and the reported cost
of more than £29 billion to UK businesses alone, we feel that we owe our clients and suppliers a reasonable duty
of care and take that very seriously.

The ramification of an uneducated employee accepting a modern virus is that it can embed itself into a pc and
then share itself with every customer and supplier e-mail contact in its database and infect them, often debilitating
complete organisations in the process.

All Xmo Strata staff that work with PC’s are engaged in this training programme that offers guidance as to how
to avoid exposure to cyber-crime and this will be a mandatory induction module for every employee that uses a
pc in the future.

We are all a product of learning. Every skill we have; everything we know; everything we believe and everything we do has
been learned throughout the course of our lives. Some of us learn best by studying graphs and charts, some through visual
presentations, and some by reading detailed text books. It is important that we receive information in a format that works for
us as individuals! That’s why at Xmo Strata we use a variety of communication platforms such as bulletins, newsletters,
videos etc. However, if you feel there is a better way for us to share health and safety information, please let us know.
Ultimately, your safety is in your hands – but we will do all we can to keep you well informed!