IT warning after hackers close 160-year-old firm

The director of a 160-year-old haulage firm put out of business by a cyber-attack has urged companies to be on their guard.

Paul Abbott was on the board at Knights of Old, based in Kettering in Northamptonshire, which went into administration in 2023 after critical financial data was corrupted.

He said: "We felt we were in a very good place in terms of our security, our protocols, the measures we'd gone to to protect the business."

Marks & Spencer (M&S) and the Co-op have experienced severe disruption recently after being targeted by hackers, and a cyber-security expert from Bedford warned it could happen to anyone.

A ransom note from a hacker group was found buried in IT systems at Knights of Old.

Despite efforts to maintain operations manually, the attack damaged key data, making it impossible to meet reporting deadlines set by lenders.

And so the company, which opened in 1865 and was employing 730 people by 2023, was forced into administration.

Mr Abbott urged bosses to check their IT systems: "There are hundreds of businesses being compromised. The issue is the reputational damage.

"Whatever you think you've done, seriously get it checked by experts. People don't think it's going to happen to them."

Cyber-security expert Tash Buckley from Cranfield University in Bedford said smaller firms were at particular risk.

"It really can happen to anyone. For larger companies, the great thing is you already have some of those processes, those procedures, you've trained your staff, you have enough money to get experts in to fix the incident as it's going on.

"For smaller companies, it's more of an existential issue. They don't have the kind of finances that M&S have to get the experts in."

Ms Buckley also highlighted the evolving nature of ransomware threats, warning of the rise of "ransomware as a service" models that combine data theft with system encryption, increasing the pressure on victims to pay ransoms.

M&S has reported its cyber attack to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

An NCSC spokesperson said: "The NCSC routinely engages with a whole range of organisations about the cyber-threats that the UK faces and regularly reminds them about the steps they can take to be as resilient as possible."

Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.