Cyber Security
Running a business is hard. Whatever the scale, whatever the industry, whether it is the first year or the twentieth, it never gets any easier.
I have been a photographer for over twenty-five years – something I love doing and am proud of what I have achieved.
Yesterday I had my emails hacked. The approach was extremely sophisticated with an email from a well-known client who is one of the best architects in the world. It is not unusual to receive information in the form of a document, but I double checked anyway by emailing them to confirm.
Suddenly I was being contacted by clients, contacts, friends and family asking what document I had sent them. This was not via email as the hackers had added rules to my email system to hide any replies to the email that they had sent from my account.
I therefore ended up spending the day telling people to delete the email, adding an alert to social media about the hack, and with the incredible IT team at Swiftech to resolve the situation and analyse my system.
How do I feel about this? My first instinct is to look at how I can prevent this happening again. The back-end system is as important as the front end – the camera equipment that I require to do my job. Storing photographs on raid systems and then archiving material in two different locations, working with a cyber security team and investing in advanced email protection.
The UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 reveals that 29% of UK organisations experienced at least one security incident linked to remote or hybrid working in the last 12 months, with phishing accounting for 85% of all business breaches recorded. For charities, the figure is even higher, with 86% of breaches involving phishing attacks, highlighting the breadth of the threat across both commercial and voluntary sectors.
If you have received an email from me in the last 24 hours that asks you to open a document, please delete it.
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