Financial details, customer details and personal information, contractual details and intellectual property are just some of the types of information that companies need to keep safe from cyber criminals. This information is valuable to criminals as they can find ways to exploit it and profit from it – at the expense of the company it was stolen from.

Cybercrime is big business for cybercriminals. The British insurance company Lloyds estimates that the damage inflicted on businesses around the world costs about $400 billion every year. This figure includes the amount of damage caused directly by the attack, plus the disruption it causes in its wake.

High-profile cyber security breaches such as the recent WannaCry virus shine a spotlight on how prepared – or unprepared – organizations are to deal with security crises.

Hundreds of thousands of computers around the world fell victim to a ransomware attack called WannaCry on Friday 12 May 2017, rendering their systems inoperable.