When One Click Has a Devastating Impact

It starts like any other Monday morning.

You’re gulping coffee, racing to that client meeting, quickly checking emails on your phone. There it is – an invoice from your biggest client. Looks exactly like the ones you’ve seen a hundred times before. After all, you’ve been doing this job for years. You tap to open it.

And in that single moment, everything changes.

But not with warning bells or flashing red lights.

Instead with silence.

In the time it takes to finish your coffee, someone you’ve never met now has access to everything. Your emails. Your files. Your client data. The company’s future – all compromised in one rushed moment of a hectic morning.

They may strike within hours, locking you out of your systems.

Or they may wait patiently, studying internal communications, learning how your company talks and operates before sending fake invoices to your clients, or requesting emergency wire transfers from them after impersonating a member of the leadership team.

Either way, it’s just a matter of time before you’ll be facing that conversation no business leader wants – telling clients their trust in you has been broken.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about reality. Modern cybercriminals target busy professionals during their most hectic moments.

The worst part?

This isn’t a rare scenario or a cautionary tale – phishing was responsible for 84% of business breaches in the UK in 2023/24.

Why?

Because cybercriminals know exactly when to strike: during those rushed, pressured moments when we’re all just trying to get on with our jobs.

The Human Cost of a Simple Click

“I don’t think I can put into words how I felt,” says Steve Wright, CEO of Kent Brushes, describing the moment he learned his company had lost £1.6 million in just 20 minutes. His financial controller – an experienced professional – had been targeted during a normal workday. “I felt for my financial controller who had fallen victim… and then very quickly went into… ‘how do we go about recovering these funds?'”

Imagine being that financial controller.

One moment you’re doing your job, the next you’ve become responsible for a massive company loss. The guilt, the self-blame, the knowledge that your simple mistake has put jobs and the company’s future at risk – it’s devastating.

And think this could never happen to you, or one of your employees?

When was the last time you scrutinised every single email during a busy workday? We’re all rushing. We’re all human. Think about your own team:

• The sales director checking emails between client meetings
• The finance manager processing multiple invoices during month-end
• The project manager coordinating deliverables under tight deadlines

Each of these dedicated professionals could be one rushed moment away from making a mistake that keeps them awake at night. It’s not about competence or training – it’s about being human in a digital world where malicious actors have designed sophisticated traps to trip us up.

This is where technology must do more to protect us.

When Simple Mistakes Lead to Major Consequences

The 2024 Cyber Security Breaches Survey reveals a sobering truth: half of all UK businesses experienced a cyber security breach in the last 12 months.

Think about that number for a moment. In your local business park, on your high street, in your industry – one in two businesses faced a cyber-attack.

Yet most of these attacks never make the headlines. The media typically only reports on breaches at major institutions or when the losses are extraordinary.

Consider these recent examples:

The British Library, one of our most prestigious institutions, suffered an attack that will cost them £7 million – about 40% of their reserves. Their services could be disrupted for up to a year, affecting thousands of users.

Glasgow-based Weir Group saw delayed shipments worth over £50 million after a breach, with £5 million spent on recovery alone.

Morgan Advanced Materials, a publicly listed company, watched their share price drop by more than 5% following an attack, with costs reaching £12 million.

But here’s the crucial point: you don’t have to be a household name to be targeted. Kent Brushes, a small Hertfordshire-based business, made headlines when they lost £1.6 million in just twenty minutes – but they’re one of the few small business stories that reached the media, and likely only did because of the substantial losses involved.

Think about it: if every cyber-attack made the news, we’d be seeing multiple reports every day.

The media simply can’t cover them all.

You’re not too small to be targeted – you’re just too small to make the headlines when it happens.

This creates a dangerous false sense of security.

While large companies’ cyber-attacks make the news, thousands of small businesses are silently dealing with their own breaches, often without the financial resources to recover easily.

Why Traditional Security Isn’t Working Anymore

The truth about cyber attacks in 2025 is both simple and complex.

While many businesses still lack basic security measures, cybercriminals have also developed increasingly sophisticated methods to bypass traditional protections and exploit human behaviour.

Take Kent Brushes’ experience – their financial controller was targeted in a sophisticated scam that gave criminals access to the company’s bank account. Despite being an experienced professional, they fell victim during a normal workday – showing how these attacks can also exploit human nature as well as technical weaknesses.

We need to stop expecting our teams to be perfect.

We need security that protects people even when they’re rushed, stressed, or distracted – because that’s the reality of how modern businesses operate.

Protection That Works Even When We’re Human

Technology needs to do better at protecting us today.

We need solutions that shield us not just from malicious actors, but from our own very human moments of distraction or pressure.

Here’s the great news: we finally have technologies that can do exactly that.

Introducing passkeys and FIDO security keys – security that works with human nature, not against it.

The Power of Passkeys

Passkeys represent a fundamental shift in how we protect ourselves in the digital world.

Instead of relying on passwords or passcodes that can be stolen or guessed, passkeys link your account to your specific device.

When you set up a passkey on an account:

1. Two digital ‘keys’ are created – one public, one private
2. The private key stays securely on your device
3. The public key sits on the website or app you’re accessing
4. When logging in, the system checks if these keys match
5. If they match, you’re logged in, if not then access denied

Only a registered device can successfully login.

Creating a passkey is unlike creating a password. No secret information is ever transmitted during the login exchange, the account is only checking if the public key it has stored matches the private key on your device.

Even if someone tricks you into clicking a malicious link, they can’t access your accounts without your physical device. It’s like having a lock that only works with your specific key.

A passkey cannot be stolen via phishing.

Major tech players like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others have made passkeys available to all their users, and other major platforms are following suit.

This isn’t future technology – it’s here now, ready to protect your business from phishing attacks, so that you and your team can click, tap and work from anywhere without the fear of being hacked.

At Lumina Technologies, we became early adopters of passkeys, and we have already begun rolling it out to our clients.

For a comprehensive summary of passkeys and how the technology works, please click here.

FIDO Security Keys: Enhanced Protection

FIDO security keys take the passkey measure a step further by having the same technology built into a physical security device. The main difference is that the passkeys are tied to a portable, physical security device that needs to connect to your laptop, computer, or tablet to authenticate your credentials, rather than to the device itself.

FIDO keys offer several advantages:

• Portable Security: Unlike passkeys that are tied to specific devices, FIDO keys can be used across multiple devices while maintaining the same high level of protection
• Physical Control: A tangible security device that needs to be physically present for you to login to company systems
• Simple But Secure: Logging in becomes as simple as inserting the key and tapping it – no complex passwords to remember
• Universal Compatibility: Works across various platforms and services

For a comprehensive summary of FIDO keys and how they work, please click here.

Why Passkeys and FIDO Keys Offer Greater Protection Against Phishing

Both passkeys and FIDO keys offer what we call “phishing-resistant” security. This is because there are:

• No passwords to steal
• No authentication codes to intercept
• No way for criminals to trick their way in to your systems
• Protection that works even if someone clicks a malicious link

Most importantly, these technologies allow your team to work efficiently without the constant worry of making a security mistake. They can check emails on their phone, process invoices, or handle sensitive data with confidence they won’t let a malicious actor in.

Protecting People, Not Just Systems

While these technologies provide much greater protection against hacking, they work best as part of a human-centred security approach:

1. Understanding Human Nature: Accepting that mistakes happen and building protection around this reality
2. Simple but Effective: Security that’s easy to use but hard to bypass
3. Supporting Not Restricting: Letting people work efficiently while staying protected
4. Peace of Mind: Knowing your team is safe even during busy periods

Taking Action Today

The evidence is clear – waiting until after a breach occurs is too late. At Lumina Technologies, we’re helping small businesses implement these new security measures through our PRISM Business package with a focus on protecting people, not just systems.

Our approach ensures:

• Your team can work confidently without fear of making mistakes
• Security that fits your real-world business practices
• Protection that works even during your busiest periods

Your Next Steps

Want to protect your team without slowing them down? Get in touch today for a free consultation about upgrading your security for the modern age.

Remember, good security isn’t about restricting your team – it’s about protecting them so they can focus on what matters: doing their job.

Click Here to Contact Lumina Technologies today to secure your business’s future.

 

Sources:

• Cyber security breaches survey 2024 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
• NCSC Annual Review 2024
• ‘My business had £1.6m stolen in 20 minutes’ – BBC News
• Thanks to a shadowy hacker group, the British Library is still on its knees. Is there any way to stop them? | Lamorna Ash | The Guardian