The Crippling Cost of Cybercrime

For many UK businesses, cybercrime is a hidden tax on finances, reputation and operational security, one that only becomes painfully real when underinvestment turns a preventable breach into a full scale disaster.

The government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 shows that almost half of UK businesses fell victim to a form of cyber incident in the past year. These are not isolated events but systemic failures that cost companies billions and threaten public confidence, impacting high street retailers, healthcare providers, and every company in between.

While seven in ten businesses have cyber security as a high priority, the remaining three are continuing to fuel a financial and operational crisis unfolding across the UK’s economy. The cost of digital crime is spiralling, becoming increasingly lucrative for criminals and costly for the targeted, meaning cybercrime is no longer a distant concern confined to IT departments but an active consideration at all operational levels.

The Growing Cybercrime Bill for British Businesses

The cost of cybercrime is now measured not in millions but billions. Research from Beaming’s Cost of Cybercrime to UK Businesses in 2023 places the overall price tag for UK businesses at £30.5 billion. This figure encompasses lost productivity, direct financial theft, disrupted services, and long term reputational harm. It illustrates just how deeply cybercrime is cutting into the national economy.

At the individual business level, the numbers may seem smaller but they are no less alarming. The average breach reported in the government’s 2025 survey cost around £1,600. For companies experiencing material losses, however, that number surged to £8,260. For firms already managing tight margins, these figures represent the difference between staying afloat and closing operations.

The weight of this bill is felt most acutely by sectors that cannot afford downtime. Retailers lose sales every hour systems are down. Logistics companies see deliveries grind to a halt when networks fail. Public services, already stretched, face the dual cost of disruption and public scrutiny when they are attacked.

Why Cybercrime Is Growing

The growth of cybercrime is not accidental. Organised criminal groups are becoming more sophisticated, treating cybercrime as a professional enterprise. They operate across borders, use advanced technologies, and adapt quickly to new defences.

Geopolitical tensions have also played a role. Conflicts and international rivalries provide fertile ground for cybercrime, either as a tool of statecraft or as a consequence of disrupted supply chains. Criminal actors often exploit smaller suppliers or contractors, knowing that a single weak link can provide access to much larger targets.

The final driver is the rapid digitisation of UK businesses. Remote and hybrid working models, reliance on cloud services, and interconnected systems have created a far larger attack surface. 

According to PrivacyEngine’s 2025 report, many companies still underestimate the scale of their exposure, especially through attack vectors like social engineering, vulnerability exploitation and lagging software updates. What might once have been a minor inconvenience can now cascade into a critical outage or data breach with long lasting consequences.

Wide Reaching Ransomware

Few threats illustrate the danger of cybercrime better than ransomware. These attacks do not merely steal data; they seize control of vital systems and hold them hostage. The demand for payment is often accompanied by the threat of leaking sensitive information, creating a double layer of pressure on victims.

Marks & Spencer is one of the most recent high profile cases. In April 2025, the retailer’s online operations were paralysed, causing estimated weekly losses of £25 million in sales. By May, the total hit to operating profit was projected at £300 million. 

The company’s market value fell by more than a billion pounds, stock management faltered and empty shelves began to appear. Investigations later showed the breach originated with a third party vendor, highlighting the dangers hidden in complex supply chains.

The NHS, alongside supplier Synnovis, experienced an equally devastating attack in June 2024. Ransomware shut down pathology services, halting blood tests and forcing the cancellation of appointments and operations. Most disturbingly, a patient’s death was partially linked to the delays caused by the attack. 

Criminals claimed to have stolen 400 GB of sensitive data and demanded $50 million. Synnovis refused to pay, and the stolen files were later released. This incident proved that ransomware is not only a financial threat but a direct risk to public health.

Other examples include Royal Mail, who was targeted in January 2023 by the LockBit ransomware group, with the incident causing widescale reputational harm and undisclosed losses, and Travelex. Its late 2019 ransomware attack disrupted services across financial institutions, supermarkets and airports around the world, ending with the company being forced into administration in 2020. 

Together, these cases reveal ransomware’s unique power to paralyse operations, devastate finances and leave reputational scars that may never fully heal.

The Ticking Time Bomb Of Windows 10’s End of Life

Technology itself can create new vulnerabilities. Windows 10 will reach the end of its supported life in October 2025, and millions of devices across the UK will no longer receive security updates. For businesses that delay upgrading, this creates an open window for attackers to exploit.

The challenge does not end with software. Many older devices cannot run Windows 11, particularly its advanced security features, meaning companies face the costly prospect of upgrading both software and hardware. PC Mag noted examples such as having a PC that’s capable of Secure Boot, which prevents malware from attacking the boot process, alongside other hardware needed to run the OS.

On top of that, hesitancy to update the existing platform can also cause issues. Every unpatched device becomes an easy target, creating weak points across corporate networks. 

The result is a growing risk vector for organisations that delay action. Those who hesitate risk making themselves low hanging fruit for attackers already looking for outdated systems.

Underinvestment In Business Cybersecurity 

Despite the escalating risks, underinvestment in cybersecurity remains widespread. For many companies, particularly small and medium sized businesses, cybersecurity is still seen as an optional line in the budget rather than a strategic priority. Yet the reality is that the cost of prevention is far lower than the cost of recovery.

The government’s 2025 survey found that only three in ten businesses had conducted a cybersecurity risk assessment in the past year. That means the majority of companies are effectively navigating blind, unaware of the vulnerabilities that criminals are ready to exploit.

Breaches result in direct financial losses, but the consequences extend further. Customers lose trust, partners question reliability, and regulators impose fines. The Synnovis case shows that in healthcare, underinvestment can even cost lives. 

The message is clear: Failing to invest in cybersecurity is not saving money. It is deferring a far greater bill.

How UK Companies Can Mitigate Risk

Mitigating the rising tide of cybercrime requires a combination of technical defences, staff awareness, and strategic planning. No single measure can provide absolute protection, but companies that build layered resilience are far less likely to face catastrophic disruption.

For smaller organisations, the most effective approach often starts with accessible, reliable endpoint protection and clear security protocols. Larger enterprises, by contrast, require advanced detection systems capable of identifying and isolating threats before they spread across networks. Both ends of the spectrum benefit from regular risk assessments, patching regimes, and rehearsed incident response plans.

We are an IT and cybersecurity company who works with both small businesses and multinational firms. Avoira has seen first hand the consequences of both preparedness and neglect. In cases where ransomware has paralysed operations, Avoira’s teams have been called on to advise on containment and continuity strategies. 

Tools such as Eset can protect most small to medium companies from the most common breaches, including phishing emails, malware and early stage ransomware attacks. These solutions are easy to deploy and manage, making them ideal for businesses without dedicated IT teams.

In practice, widespread attacks like those that initially targeted Travelex could have potentially been mitigated at the employee level with strong endpoint protection, stopping malware before it spread across systems. By focusing on prevention and early detection, Eset reduces the chance that a small breach escalates into a full scale incident.

For larger companies, a more robust approach is needed. Many turn to RansomCare from Bullwall for proactive monitoring that keeps track of threats and counters them automatically as and when they happen. Avoira itself relies on Bullwall to secure its own infrastructure, a move that reflects its confidence in the technology. 

In cases like Synnovis or Royal Mail, where systems were paralysed and sensitive data put at risk, real time detection and automatic containment could have limited the spread and shortened downtime.

What these experiences highlight is that the threat is not abstract. Each attack provides lessons that can be applied to strengthen defences more broadly. 

Companies that treat cybersecurity as central to business continuity are those most likely to survive and recover, and those that do not are carrying a risk that could end up crippling more than just their own credibility, but their customers, trust, and the very business they operate.

Sources:

Corera, G. (2024) Lockbit: UK leads disruption of major cyber-criminal gang. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68344987.

Muncaster, P. (2025) ‘Travelex Forced into Administration After Ransomware Attack,’ Infosecurity Magazine, 10 September. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/travelex-forced-administration/.

Avoira (2025) RansomWare Solutions Provider | ESET & Bullwall | Avoira. https://avoira.com/solutions/it-services-cyber-security/cyber-security-2/ransomware/.

Cyber security breaches survey 2025 (2025). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2025/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2025.

Cyber Security Intelligence – UK Business Cybercrime Impact Summary (2023). https://www.cybersecurityintelligence.com/blog/the-true-cost-of-cyber-crime-in-the-uk-7164.html.

Avoira (2025) Cyber Security Solutions for small businesses | ESET | Avoira. https://avoira.com/solutions/it-services-cyber-security/cyber-security-2/.

Rubenking, N. (2024) ‘Windows 11 is Ultra Secure—Here’s how to keep it that way,’ PCMag UK, 6 September. https://uk.pcmag.com/migrated-3765-windows-10/136342/windows-11-is-ultra-secure-dont-mess-it-up.

Jaz and Jaz (2025) Cybersecurity Statistics UK 2025: UK Trends, Facts & Board Actions. https://www.privacyengine.io/blog/uk-cybersecurity-statistics-2025.

NHS Provider (Synnovis) Ransomware Costs (2025). https://www.ft.com/content/d2be7c65-bf44-4a7d-9791-6deafe66659f.

The cost of business cybercrime in 2023 (2024). report. Beaming, pp. 4–8. https://www.beaming.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Cost-of-Cyber-Crime-in-UK-Businesses-in-2023.pdf.

UK retailer Marks & Spencer puts cyberattack cost at $400 million with disruptions ongoing | AP News (2025). https://apnews.com/article/fef28bc0947576903cf83c3f42afc1e8.