Almost a third (28 per cent) of UK businesses offer no cyber security training to managers and staff, to reduce the likelihood and severity of data breaches while working from home, according to research.

Managed cloud services and security provider iomart questioned 1,167 C-level, director, manager and employee staff about their businesses’ cyber security provisions, including the level of training offered, the extent of data backup policies in place, and their awareness of how to identify a cyber attack.

Although 42 per cent of staff reported that training was offered by their firms, it was only provided to “select employees” rather than to the entire staff.

Of those firms who did offer training, for a huge proportion (82 per cent) of staff it consisted of a short briefing rather than a comprehensive course.

Only 17 per cent of workers had regular sessions relating to cyber security.

When asked why they believed their organisation did not offer cyber security awareness training across the board, respondents cited a lack of budget, a lack of prioritisation when it came to preventing cyber attacks and a lack of technical expertise to implement it.

This is “concerning”, said iomart, as almost a fifth (20 per cent) of those surveyed reported seeing an increase in cyber attacks as a result of working remotely, while a quarter of workers admitted their business did not have a disaster recovery policy in place.

Of those that held management positions, more than a quarter (29 per cent) admitted they were unsure whether the business had data and disaster recovery policies in place.

Bill Strain, security director for iomart, said: “It’s clear that many organisations still don’t consider cyber security and data protection to be a top priority.

“They need to understand what the potential threats are and build resilience into their business strategy, so they can react quickly and maintain operations if their IT systems are compromised.”

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