Richard Forrest speaks to Radio City about the surge in cybercrime in Merseyside

Hayes Connor Legal Director Richard Forrest recently sat down with Radio City to discuss the surge in cybercrime across the Merseyside region over the past 12 months.

Radio City looked into the rise of cybercrime across Merseyside after Make UK, a British manufacturing organisation, found that half of all manufacturing firms have been the victim of cybercrime over the past year.

Make UK claim that cybercriminals have been exploiting emergency working measures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, launching attacks which have caused widespread damage to various businesses.

In an interview with Radio City, Richard spoke about what the past 12 months have looked like in the world of data breaches and cybercrime, including a discussion about the data breach survey we commissioned at the end of 2020:

"We've been really busy over the past 12 months, and we ourselves actually commissioned a survey at the back end of last year, to look at what the impacts of the pandemic, on cybersecurity and data breaches generally was.” Richard said.

"We found some quite useful things. 2 in 5 workers or 40% of people who were asked said that their company had been impacted by a breach. It's hard to fully defend against it nowadays, but you can seek advice from an expert on what they would class as the industry standard for what you're operating in.

"Ultimately that's probably what you'll be judged by if you do suffer an attack, the question will be okay, well, what measures did you have in place?

“You probably hear about the big stuff in the news, like British Airways and Ticketmaster, because they're household names. We get lots of smaller-scale cyber-attacks that you've never heard of and it can really fall on both those ends of the spectrum."

Richard also went on to discuss how employees, customers and clients of a business may be able to make a claim for compensation if they have been affected by a cyberattack:

"Even if it's what you might think is basic data, e.g. name, address, email address, maybe telephone number, that in itself might not be enough to cause a direct attack but that can lead to the real damage.

"That might then lead to a call or a phishing email where [victims] can lose their data.

"People tend to worry that if you're trying to apply for a mortgage, they worry about the impact on their credit score or that kind of thing, it's that kind of stuff that's not really thought about."

How Hayes Connor can help you with a data breach claim

Hayes Connor has one of the largest teams of dedicated data breach specialists in the country, with a wealth of combined experience. We are well placed to provide expert advice in relation to a variety of different data breaches and cybercrimes.

If you believe that your data was compromised following a cyberattack against a business that holds your data, you may be able to make a claim for compensation. This is something the team can discuss with you further, as well as running through the general details of the claims process.

You can find out more about our expertise and how we handle data breach claims here.

To start a claim, you can use our online claim form.

To speak to a member of our team, please do not hesitate to give us a call on 0151 363 5895.