Universities and Companies in the UK Are Facing Severe Threats

Advancements in technology have resulted in several scenarios where the bad guys seem to have an upper hand on the good guys, especially in the online world. This is evident from the fact that a staggering 56% of the universities in the UK are plagued with ransomware. This comes as a shock since universities in the UK are supposed to be equipped with state-of-the-art technological infrastructure to thwart off digital evils.

According to a research by SentinelOne, almost 50 percent of the universities in the UK have been a victim of ransomware infection over the past year alone. Some universities refuse to disclose details about attacks as it may lead to negative publicity, which clearly shows the magnitude of the problem. If you’re a student, then it’s likely that your information may have been compromised by a ransomware attack and then sold online. Not the university experience you imagined for yourself, right?

It was further discovered that universities were only relying on an antivirus, while some universities did not have an antivirus to begin with. The lack of interest in ensuring the privacy of the institution and its students resulted in hackers and cyber criminals exploiting poor security measures.

Universities are home to thousands of students pursuing higher education in hopes of then running their own business. If these ransomware attacks are successful at de-motivating their drive to make a difference, then what will be the future of businesses, future entrepreneurs, and global economics?

Alarmingly, it looks like cyber attackers have initiated a diabolical plan to wreak havoc on the UK as a whole. Apart from universities being targeted with ransomware, Imperva’s Annual Threat Report found that DDoS attacks had escalated by more than 220% between April 2015 and March 2016 in the UK. The report further revealed that the UK is the second most popular target in the world for ransomware and other cyber attacks.

To shed a little light, a DDoS attack takes place when an attacker keeps on sending unnecessary fake traffic to a company’s network in order to temporarily or permanently shut it down. With organizations growing at a rapid scale and the emergence of new companies, DDoS attacks are becoming increasingly common.

Furthermore, Imperva found that such attacks increased from 29.4% in the third quarter of 2015 to an astonishing 50% in the first quarter of 2016. Blinded by their greed for an easy buck and bent upon destruction, DDoS attackers targeted several organizations by continuously bombarding them with fake traffic. Unfortunately, companies in the UK have yet to realize that the presence of such attackers poses serious threat to their online businesses and the data of their customers.

With that being said, ensuring your security and privacy does not, and is not, a hefty undertaking. The online world has no boundaries and attackers will keep on targeting you unless you adopt the use of strict measures that will keep you safe and anonymous. With the use of a good Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, you can rest assured regarding your online presence.

Using the best VPN service is paramount when it comes to safeguarding your business and data. The best VPN for your business’ online security and privacy is PureVPN. It has the top-notch VPN features in the industry. PureVPN has a self-engineered and self-managed VPN infrastructure that offers a huge pool of 80,000+ IPs from over 550+ servers located in 140+ countries. By subscribing to PureVPN, individuals and businesses can be safe from all sorts of hackers and reach their maximum potential by employing 256-bit military-grade encryption as standard along with DDoS protection.

PureVPN offers a specialized Business VPN with add-ons such as DDoS protection, NAT firewall amongst various others. PureVPN can not only protect citizens and businesses in the UK, but all over the world due to its global network. If people and businesses in the UK start using PureVPN, undoubtedly they will benefit from being anonymous, protected from all sorts of cyber attacks and remaining secure at all times.