High-profile cyber attacks against the construction industry show how businesses of all sizes are being targeted by criminals, according to the government’s National Cyber Security Centre. The GCHQ-backed agency has partnered with the Chartered Institute of Building to produce a new guide to help construction SMEs protect themselves from cyber attacks.

The guide is available here.

Ian Anfield, managing director of Hudson Contract, said: “It used to be yellow-vested rogues turning up on site in a flat-bed transit claiming to have come to off-hire plant and machinery, or to move expensive materials to another job, but nowadays construction firms are just as likely to be scammed by criminals armed with little more than a keyboard.”

Bradford-based Safestyle, the UK’s largest retailer and installer of replacement windows and doors to the homeowner market, was forced to issue a profit warning last month after falling foul to a highly sophisticated cyber-attack that emanated from Russia.