Eco Group launches Resilience

Eco Group is cutting the ribbon on a cyber security operation called Resilience later this month to protect customers from the latest threats.

The firm, based in Carlisle, will be focusing on building a customer base in Cumbria and south-west Scotland.

The business will be warning customers of the risks of leaving vulnerabilities in their defences that could be exploited by criminals.

Ryan Moffat, head of Resilience, said businesses were facing an increasing number of threats, often coming from foreign powers seeking to disrupt UK organisations.

“They will target any business with thousands of automated attacks in the hope of one getting through and giving them access into an organisation and all its data,” he added. “I know of cases where businesses are receiving 10,000 phishing attacks every day.”

Moffat said small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were often the targets of attacks and there was a widespread need for increased security.

“We are not talking big corporate organisations. We are talking small and medium-sized operations, because cyber criminals know these organisations are likely to have more weak spots in their defences,” he said.

“The criminals want to access as much information about you and your business as possible. Who your customers are, who your suppliers are, they want to disrupt your entire operations,” he added. “It only takes one person to click on a link and they are into your data and your systems with access to information on all your people and all your business connections.”

As a result, he said there was a need to ensure organisations had no weak links and that staff at customer businesses were aware of the threats being faced and the risks of exposing data.

“Every single person has a part to play in maintaining cyber security. It’s vital that everyone in an organisation knows what is safe and what isn’t,” added Moffat.

Other security experts agree that SMEs remain a target for cyber criminals, with the volume of attacks expected to rise this year.

“SMEs are at risk of becoming prime targets due to their limited cyber security resources. Criminals will not only directly attack these organisations, but also use them as strategic entry points for more extensive supply chain attacks into larger enterprises,” said Usman Choudhary, chief product and technology officer at Vipre Security Group.

He added that artificial intelligence (AI) was increasingly being used to drive more advanced attacks and the challenges for SMEs continued to mount.

“The cyber security landscape in 2024 witnessed a noticeable increase in the use of malware by cyber criminals to breach corporate networks, leading to widely publicised data leaks and reputational damage for the organisations involved. Likewise, criminals exploited supply chain vulnerabilities to infiltrate systems and cause severe disruption, highlighting the far-reaching consequences of software integrity failures,” he said.

“In 2025, cyber criminals are poised to deploy AI-generated malware to breach corporate networks and exploit supply chain ecosystems for vulnerabilities. They will leverage AI to develop highly evasive malware to bypass traditional detection methods while also automating vulnerability scanning and phishing,” he added.