Sophos has just published a whitepaper, ‘Housing-sector cybersecurity: How to build strong security foundations & respond to cyber incidents in 2021’.
The whitepaper profiles three housing providers, Action Housing & Support, Futures Housing and Williamsburgh Housing, and looks at how they have developed their own solutions to the problems of cybersecurity risk, limited budgets and complex technological constraints.
The Sophos whitepaper says, “Severe cyberattacks were something organisations in the housing sector didn’t think they needed to worry about. At the time, this seemed reasonable; publicly-reported incidents usually affected large, private companies filled with valuable resources such as intellectual property, sensitive documents, and payments data. Most likely, if a cyberattack did occur in a sector such as housing, it would be limited in scope and generic in design, an example of ‘the devil takes the hindmost’.
“Predatory cybercrime has now spread to affect every organisation, including every type and size of housing provider. Being of a certain size, in a certain sector or operating as a non-profit or charity, is no longer a defence. What matters to cybercriminals is that an organisation has a mission to accomplish which they attempt to disrupt, steal from, and monetize at almost zero risk to themselves. Now everyone’s head has a price on it.”
The Sophos whitepaper is available now from sophos.com/ukhousing.
