Pia Hüsch

"We still have such poor insights on the actual number of attacks," says Pia Huesch​, a research analyst at the British defense and security think tank Royal United Services Institute. She adds that companies are still reluctant to talk about attacks, fearing reputational harm. In May, officials at the UK's National Cybersecurity Center and data regulator the Information Commissioner's Office said they were increasingly concerned about companies not reporting ransomware attacks and “the ransoms paid to make them go away.” They warned that if incidents are “covered up,” the number of attacks will only increase. "Individuals who engage in cybercrime, to them the benefits still massively outweigh the risks of perhaps being prosecuted," Huesch says.

There’s a wide range of threats against the UK that are causing a lot of harm already but don’t come close to a war threshold,” says Hüsch. “We’ve seen a massive uptake in cyber operations against Nato targets, particularly in the Baltics and in Poland. For example, Russian and Belarusian groups impersonated accounts of people who work in think tanks or in academia, and there’s been a lot of data theft.”

Pia Hüsch, a research analyst at RUSI and the report’s principal author, says the report also highlights the importance of collaboration between the private and public sectors. (ISC)² CEO Clar Rosso added that the report, which was based on research conducted from December 2022 to March 2023, is “a first-of-its-kind comparative work, pushed by the proliferation of new cyber regulation – and the fact that more is on the way.”