Government Survey Finds Most UK Businesses Lack Confidence in Basic Cybersecurity Skills

The UK government's latest annual skills survey has found that 57 percent of businesses, roughly 808,000 organisations, lack confidence in performing at least one of nine basic cybersecurity tasks. This is up from 49 percent last year, despite tighter national standards and repeated government warnings about cyber resilience. Researchers noted the rise could partly reflect greater awareness of security gaps rather than an actual decline in capability, with recent high-profile breaches prompting more scrutiny from executives and boards.

The biggest weakness identified was detecting and removing malware, an area where 38 percent of businesses, 47 percent of charities, and 23 percent of public sector organisations lacked confidence. The public sector performed better than businesses and charities across all nine basic skills measured in the survey.

Industry experts say the problem is often worse for smaller businesses and charities, where cybersecurity responsibilities are typically handled by someone juggling multiple roles rather than a dedicated specialist. Experts also pointed to the growing complexity of business IT environments, including cloud services, SaaS platforms and third-party connections, as well as the use of AI by attackers to produce malware variants that are harder to detect.