This October sees the return of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025, an annual campaign designed to get everyone talking about the importance of cybersecurity.
This year, more than ever, we’ve all seen firsthand how even the biggest brands are getting their defences wrong. We’ve seen Marks and Spencer’s, Harrods, the Co-Op, Jaguar Land rover, Adidas and even Heathrow airport be targeted by hackers. In some ways, it’s made it easier for us to talk to businesses in Suffolk about the threats because we’re all seeing the real-time impact of cybercrime. But it’s also worth reminding you that hackers aren’t just targeting big businesses, they are also actively targeting companies like yours.
Cybercrime in the East of England is a genuine problem for businesses and individuals.
We’ve compiled stats from Action Fraud dashboard, and the results are chilling.
This year alone (date range: 01/01/2025 – 30/09/2025) there have been 5,267 reports of cybercrime in the Eastern region (categorised as Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Kent), resulting in financial losses of £1million.
The tool allows us to see how our local areas are affected by cybercrime, and as you can see, there’s a lot here to show that we all need to keep our defences up, both personally and professionally.
| Police Force | Type of Victim | Number of reports | Total financial losses | |
| Eastern | All | 5267 | £1million | |
| Individual | 5059 | £678,800 | ||
| Organisation | 196 | £339,000 | ||
| Essex | Essex Police | All | 1285 | £10,500 |
| Individual | 1243 | £10,500 | ||
| Organisation | 40 | 0 | ||
| Norfolk | Norfolk Police | All | 503 | £337,800 |
| Individual | 482 | £4,800 | ||
| Organisation | 21 | £333,000 | ||
| Suffolk | Suffolk Police | All | 383 | £23,400 |
| Individual | 363 | £17,400 | ||
| Organisation | 19 | £6,000 |
We’ve spoken to our resident cybersecurity expert, Karl Wilkinson who says.
“These stats are sobering. We don’t want to see that businesses in Suffolk have lost £6,000 to cybercrime, nor do we want to see that Norfolk businesses have lost £333,000! This data confirms what we always say to local businesses. Hackers will be just as likely to target your business as they will bigger brands.
The challenge now is for businesses to take this data and show it to their senior leadership teams.
Local businesses in Ipswich can’t afford to hope that they won’t be targeted. Instead, it’s time change their thinking and assume they will be hacked. Changing that thought process means that you can pre-empt any attack and have the right defences in place which will protect you and keep your business safe from harm.”
The Cybersecurity resources you need to bookmark and share with your teams
If you’ve paid attention to our blog section in recent years, you’ll know that we regularly write about cybersecurity and share our knowledge and insights.
To make it easy for you to find what you’re looking for, here’s a comprehensive list of the recent subjects we’ve been writing about. Please add them to your bookmark bar or share them with your team.
The more we all think about best practice cybersecurity defences, the safer we will all be – personally, and professionally.
How to protect your emails
Why your business needs to set up safe, secure passwords
Getting certified with Cyber Essentials could be crucial to your defences
- What is the difference between Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus?
- Is Cyber Essentials worth the investment for small businesses?
- How to achieve Cyber Essentials – a step by step guide
AI and cybersecurity
- What does AI mean in the context of security?
- Bringing artificial intelligence into IT support
- Cybersecurity and AI: Is it a help or a hindrance?
The importance of employee management within cybersecurity settings
- Why SMES need to protect themselves from digital threats
- Are your employees unintentionally risking your confidential data?
- Who should take ownership of your cybersecurity strategy?
- Cybersecurity should focus on human weaknesses as well as digital ones
- The five critical steps every business should take to protect themselves
How confident are you in your security settings?
During our recent coffee and questions networking event, we asked this exact question to our audience.
The results were unanimous; most people in the room were not confident that their business was as secure as it could be.
We don’t want cybersecurity to be a terrifying thing that keeps you awake at night. We want it to be something that is accessible to every business, whatever your size or sector. In fact, getting the basics right (such as installing MFA, a strong password policy and ongoing employee education) could be the best things that you ever do to stay safe.
But if you are nervous, then please book in for a cybersecurity check to identify your strengths and weaknesses. We want to help you figure out what steps you need to take to keep your business safe from harm.
During our cybersecurity consultations we will talk to businesses across Ipswich and Colchester about
- The safeguards you currently have in place.
- What you need to do to strengthen your resilience
- Best practice protocols
- Why employee education and training is just as important as technical improvements.
At the end of the session, you’ll receive a series of recommendations from our cybersecurity experts outlining what you need to do to ensure that they have the fundamental protections in place.
To book in for your free cybersecurity consultation, please phone us on 01473 355199.
