Following news that Royal Mail has been hit by a ransomware attack, David Bicknell, principal analyst on the Thematic Intelligence team at GlobalData, offers his view on how companies can improve their cybersecurity measures.

“This attack is a sharp reminder that no company is immune from attack,” he said. “The silver lining is that an attack like this should jolt every chief executive into scrutinizing their cyber-readiness plans. This scrutiny should involve examining every aspect, every action, and every individual named. No CEO wants to look at their action plan after an attack and realize that a key individual left the company three months ago.

“If companies haven’t started thinking about how to defend themselves, now is the time to do it. They can start by adopting a strategic zero-trust approach to cybersecurity that helps secure an organization by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating every stage of digital interactions.

“Zero-trust helps you understand who your users are, which applications they should use — and are using — and how they connect. It can help prevent threat actors and malicious insiders from having the freedom to move laterally in your company and access or exfiltrate your sensitive data due to a lack of security controls.”