NFU Mutual Issues Cyber Warning to Businesses

The word from NFU Mutual as they highlight how frequent cyber attacks are all UK businesses, large and small;

More than four in 10 businesses (43%) reported having a cyber breach or attack in the last 12 months – equating to approximately 612,000 UK companies, the 2025/26 Government Cyber Security Breaches survey shows.

While the survey highlighted that medium (65%) and large (69%) businesses were more likely to have fallen victim in the last 12 months – it is clear that small (46%) and micro (42%) businesses are also not immune. Larger companies can often have resources in place to protect from, or bounce back from a breach, however for SMEs it could prove fatal, prompting cyber hygiene tips from commercial insurer NFU Mutual.

This was the case for transport logistics firm Knights of Old, which collapsed after 150 years in 2023 following a ransomware attack.

Former Director Paul Abbott said at 6am on the morning of the attack there was a report on their system which stated there were IT issues – but it wasn’t anything that hadn’t been seen previously. “Even fairly early, we didn’t think it was a cyber breach,” Paul said.

However, as more workers tried to log on and couldn’t, the alarm bells started to ring . E-Mails weren’t landing and as part of the restart of servers a ransom note was found.

“It was a really sobering moment,” Paul said. “You think ‘this is serious, now what do we do? How serious is this?’

“We underestimated a situation like this, where it would be such an interruption beyond 24 hours. We had a proven and successful continuity plan for taking deliveries and delivering cargo, but what we didn’t focus on was how finance would keep on top of all that. We kept running at a certain pace but the finance side was so reliant on technology and hadn’t got the same level of options they could use.”

With even the most established of businesses being susceptible to cyber-attacks, Paul has since become a passionate advocate for board-level cyber-security awareness.

“Cyber risk is a culture that needs to be embedded in a business. That has to be something embraced from the top and driven from the top down. People have to understand where the risk is. One thing I would say is that no company is immune to this, regardless of size,” he added.

In the last 12 months, the number of small businesses undertaking cyber security risk assessments fell from 48% to 41%, prompting advice from James Trevis, Cyber Portfolio Manager at NFU Mutual.