In light of recent cyber incidents across Europe, October serves to remind us of the importance of remaining vigilant in cyber space. The European Union has in fact launched its annual campaign for this year’s European Cybersecurity month with the theme ‘ThinkB4UClick’.
European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM)
The ECSM aims to promote cybersecurity across Europe, specifically through the raising awareness and highlighting of good practices in cybersecurity. October has been the designated month since 2012 for the cybersecurity campaign, ushering in various activities in Europe to reach the aims of the annual campaign. This campaign is organized by ENISA as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity and the European Commission, with the participation of Member States.
The theme of this year’s campaign #ThinkB4UClick focuses on social engineering tactics by cyber criminals to trick users into providing sensitive information online. The European Commission itself cites a recent survey on cybersecurity skills which evidences the need to raise awareness and provide training on cybersecurity. It refers to a ‘skills gap’ which needs to be addressed, particularly to ensure that businesses and family offices do not fall victim to cyber criminals’ actions.
Recent Cyber Incidents
The importance of raising awareness through campaigns such as the one conducted across Europe cannot be understated. The significant rise in recent cyber incidents demonstrates the need for more awareness on cybersecurity and practices to prevent breaches of security.
DELL experienced three data breaches this year alone, with the first in May 2024 affecting millions of customers, and two further breaches in September 2024, just days away from each incident affecting employees’ data and confidential business information. Solarwinds also fell victim to a cyber incident achieved through malware exploiting supply chain vulnerability. The effects were felt across US entities, EU institutions and some UK public sector organisations.
Earlier this year even the giant technology company Microsoft suffered a global outage caused by a cyber-attack which affected its products and services such as Outlook. This time a distributed denial-of- service (DDOS) attack was the culprit behind the Microsoft outage, as it flooded the services with internet traffic to cause an outage.
How we can help
Our cybersecurity legal and technical expertise allows us to help private individuals, family offices and businesses prevent cybersecurity breaches and act fast and effectively in remediating, asset tracing and recovery, prosecution and litigation when cybersecurity breaches do happen. Our cybersecurity reach is truly international through our partnership with cybersecurity law firms around the globe.
