Why Cybersecurity Awareness Matters for Your Business

What would happen if your team arrived tomorrow morning and couldn’t access their emails, take a payment or open your customer database? What if confidential client information had been stolen, or a member of your finance team had transferred money following a convincing request from someone impersonating a colleague?

Whatever your organisation does, a cyber attack can interrupt the systems, relationships and services you rely on every day. You don’t need to be a household name or hold millions of customer records to have something worth targeting.

For every business, the question is the same: how confident are you in your cybersecurity, and what is that confidence based on?

A business risk in every sector

An accountancy firm holds sensitive financial information. A manufacturer depends on production systems. A charity manages donor details. A small consultancy relies on email, shared documents and trusted client relationships.

What would happen if your business couldn’t trade tomorrow? If your systems stayed offline for weeks, customer information was stolen and you still had salaries, suppliers and overheads to pay?

For organisations delivering healthcare or other essential services, the consequences can go further. When access to critical systems is lost, people’s safety – and their lives – can be at risk.

These are real consequences of cyber attacks. And they show why cybersecurity deserves attention at every level of an organisation.

Recent attacks on supermarket refrigeration systems across Europe offer a striking example. In November 2026, retailers reported disruption after attackers targeted systems controlling fridges and freezers, causing temperatures to rise and food to be removed from sale. The incidents followed similar attacks in France in October.

The attacks on Marks & Spencer and Co-op in 2025 also demonstrate how severely a cyber incident can disrupt even well-established businesses.

M&S paused online orders in April and subsequently warned that disruption would continue through June and into July as services restarted. In May, it estimated a £300 million impact on annual operating profit, before mitigation, insurance and trading actions. The consequences included reduced food availability, additional waste, manual processes and heavily disrupted online sales.

The wider lesson here is how closely digital security is connected to everyday operations. 

If your business depends in any way on technology, cybersecurity belongs on your agenda. Understanding where you are vulnerable, and whether your people know what to do, is an essential place to start.

The UK Government’s Be Ready guidance encourages households to prepare for up to three days of disruption. The checklist includes drinking water, non-perishable food such as tins, a battery or wind-up FM radio, a torch, a charged power bank and some cash in case electronic payments or cash machines are disrupted.

This is guidance for a range of emergencies, including outages and severe weather. It should not be read as a prediction of an imminent cyber attack.

However, it prompts a useful business question: what is your organisation’s equivalent of an emergency kit?

If your usual systems became unavailable, could you contact staff, reach key suppliers, access essential information and continue serving customers? Would everyone know what to do, or would the instructions be sitting in an email account nobody could open?

Is the cyber threat really increasing?

The National Cyber Security Centre’s 2025 Annual Review recorded 204 nationally significant incidents, compared with 89 the previous year. That measures the incidents requiring its support, rather than every attack across the UK, but it shows the growing seriousness of the cases it was handling.

And this is relevant to smaller organisations too. The NCSC’s guidance explicitly warns small businesses against assuming they are too small to be targeted, and encourages every member of the team to take responsibility for cybersecurity.

How do you know your company is secure?

“We have an IT provider” is a starting point. But it still leaves some important questions unanswered.

Business leaders do not need to become cybersecurity specialists, but they do need enough understanding to ask useful questions and recognise where responsibility sits.

Start with these:

• What are we protecting? Do we understand which information, accounts and systems are essential to keeping the business running?
• Who has access? Are permissions reviewed, including those of former employees and external suppliers?
• How are important accounts protected? Where are we using multi-factor authentication, and where are the gaps?
• Who maintains our technology? Does that include websites, connected devices and equipment managed by third parties?
• Can we recover? When did we last test that we could restore essential information from backups?
• Would our people speak up? Can someone report a suspicious message or an accidental click quickly, without fear of blame?
• Have we practised our response? Who makes decisions, contacts specialists and communicates with customers if an incident occurs?

How do you turn awareness into action?

Reading about an attack on another organisation may prompt concern. The important next step is to ask what it means for your own business—and make sure that conversation reaches the people who make decisions, manage information and use your systems every day.

Would your staff recognise a convincing impersonation attempt? Do your leaders understand where the biggest vulnerabilities could sit? Does everyone know how to raise a concern quickly?

Inviting a guest cybersecurity speaker into your organisation can help turn a distant threat into something your team understands and feels equipped to act on.

Why bring in a cybersecurity keynote speaker?

Cybersecurity can struggle to compete with the everyday demands of running a business. Policies and training matter, but people also need to understand why the guidance applies to them and what is at stake.

The right speaker makes that connection. A live hacking demonstration can reveal weaknesses people had never considered. A personal account of identity theft can show the devastating consequences of fraud. An investigative journalist can explain who is behind major attacks and challenge assumptions about how criminals choose their targets.

A keynote can give leaders the confidence to ask better questions, help employees recognise risks and create momentum for a wider security review or awareness programme. It works alongside technical safeguards, bringing the human understanding and engagement those safeguards depend on.

Whether you are planning a company conference, leadership meeting or dedicated staff session, we can help you find a speaker who makes cybersecurity relevant to your audience.

Here are four cybersecurity speakers we recommend considering.

Glenn Wilkinson: see cybersecurity through a hacker’s eyes

Ethical hacker Glenn Wilkinson brings audiences inside the attacker’s mindset through live demonstrations. He can test the security of your organisation with permission, and perform a live ‘hack’ into websites and softwares. His sessions make technical risks tangible and give audiences plenty to discuss afterwards.

A strong choice for: leadership teams and company events where actually seeing a vulnerability demonstrated could prompt a more useful conversation than another presentation about risk.

Bennett Arron: the human cost of identity theft

Award-winning comedian Bennett Arron experienced identity theft that left him facing debts he had never incurred, and ultimately penniless and homeless. He now combines that experience with humour to speak about fraud, identity theft and cybersecurity. His approach helps audiences engage with a serious subject in a memorable, accessible way.

A strong choice for: staff awareness events where you want people to understand why everyday decisions about personal information and suspicious communications matter.

Joe Tidy: meet the people behind the cybercrime headlines

The BBC’s first Cyber Security Correspondent and a BBC Radio 4 presenter, Joe Tidy has investigated cybercrime and spoken directly to hackers responsible for major incidents. His book, Ctrl+Alt+Chaos: How Teenage Hackers Hijack the Internet, explores the world of teenage hacking and the harm it can cause.

A keynote drawing on his book, followed by audience Q&A, offers an engaging way to explore the threat and ask the questions the headlines leave unanswered.

A strong choice for: conferences and leadership events seeking an informed, journalistic perspective on cybercrime.

Lisa Ventura: make cybersecurity everyone’s business

Award-winning cybersecurity consultant and Cyber Security Unity founder Lisa Ventura speaks on subjects including security awareness, phishing, ransomware and collaboration. She helps organisations bring the conversation to a wider audience and connect cybersecurity with people and working culture.

A strong choice for: organisations looking to build awareness and encourage shared responsibility across departments.

Start the conversation before an incident forces you to have it

You may not think cybersecurity belongs on your next event agenda. But if your organisation depends on email, payments, customer information, suppliers or connected equipment, the subject already affects your business.

Giving people the time to understand those risks is a practical investment. 

Speak to The Speakers Agency about a cybersecurity keynote speaker for your next conference, leadership meeting or staff event. We’ll take the time to understand your audience and recommend someone who can make the risks clear, the discussion engaging and the next steps easier to identify.

Call +44(0)1332 810481 or email enquiries@thespeakersagency.com.