NatWest Roundtable
Matt Turner: Has anyone heard of Cyber Essentials? It’s a government run scheme to get you accredited for cyber security. Any business in the UK that trades with central government has to be Cyber Essentials approved. Within the next 12 months, any business working on any local government projects will have to be approved too. From every point of view, even if just for insurance purposes, this is a great scheme.
organisation providing enough awareness to that employee about how they should be acting with information?
Andrew Clinton: A recent survey of the top 200 law firms asked the question, ‘have you suffered an internet security issue?’ and 66% of them responded yes. If two thirds of top 200 law firms have suffered an incident, that really gives you an indication of the scale of this. The vulnerability goes beyond employees – “LLPs don’t get tax you’re absolutely right credits on R&D and about educating them, the amount of time but as we move forward, we are spending we need to think about on innovation, new collaboration on the ideas, new services internet. You’re going to have third party suppliers and new products and a whole network equals a lot of oney of other people, so the without tax relief” whole issues spreads.
Jason Fry: I think the government does have a bigger part to play. The report last year was that the UK lost £27 billion to financial crime. I don’t really see much central government activity though, which is a huge shame because they could communicate to all businesses quite easily, and create a simple audit for businesses to check how secure they are and actually a lot of firms invite third party vendors into their systems also, so it needs to extend to them. There’s a large discussion around employee status as well from a legal perspective because at the end of the day it’s the employee that’s being duped and where do they stand from a legal perspective within that business? Is the
20 www.sussexbusinessgroup.co.uk
Daryl Gayler: I think for me the big concern is not so much for the bigger businesses, and the damage it does to their brand because they will survive. But it’s actually the SMEs that tend to get done for £25,000 and that could potentially spell collapse. Small businesses really come under pressure on the back of mistakes that staff have made, and even with the best efforts to educate them and build security into
the systems, there is still that element of human error. Do professional services need to up their game in terms of investment in technology (R&D)? Andrew Clinton: Yes, certainly they do. If you look outside of professional services typically people spend quite a lot of money on research and development. Most organisations have an R&D budget, but there won’t be many law firms that do, so there’s a mindset shift required and an issue within the model itself. There’s a difference between the mindset of an investor and the mindset of a partner, and I think for professional services – particularly law firms moving forward – we will have to think about our business a lot more as investors. One of the real disadvantages that has come to light when you research it is LLPs don’t get tax credits on R&D and the amount of time we are spending on innovation, new ideas, new services and new products equals a lot of money without tax relief. Daryl Gayler: My concern with the idea around R&D is that it does take investment in technology and people’s time. Both of those cost money, so in an environment where costs are challenging, some of those budgets around investment could be under pressure. It