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 following the latest spate of cyber attacks on UK retailers.
Paul Abbott was on the board at Knights of Old, a Kettering-based firm, when it suffered a cyber attack in 2023, eventually forcing the business to close.
He 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.”
A ransom note from a hacker group was found buried in IT systems which damaged key data and made it impossible for the company to manually keep up to reporting deadlines set by its lenders. This resulted in parent company KNP Logistics Group, which employed 730 people at the time, going into administration.
Knights of Old started out as a single horse and cart in 1865 and was one of the UK’s largest privately owned logistics companies at the time of its closure.