Co-Founder & Director
Lee Robinson
State-backed cyber activity doesn't need to target your business directly to affect it. As tensions in the Middle East escalate, the NCSC says the indirect risk to UK organisations is heightened, and small businesses are not exempt.
The threat doesn’t need to be aimed at you
Following the conflict in the Middle East, the National Cyber Security Centre issued an advisory to UK organisations. Its wording is careful: there is “likely no current significant change in the direct cyber threat from Iran to the UK.” Read quickly, that sounds reassuring. Read properly, it isn’t the whole sentence.
The NCSC goes on to say there is an “almost certainly heightened risk of indirect cyber threat” for organisations with a presence in the Middle East, a supply chain that touches the region, or a Critical National Infrastructure designation. That’s a far longer list of businesses than most owners assume they belong to.
Why “we’re too small to matter” doesn’t hold up
State-linked threat actors don’t need to walk through your front door to cause damage. They can arrive through a supplier, a client, or a piece of software three steps removed from your own systems. Reporting elsewhere on Iran-linked hacking activity has echoed the same theme: state actors are opportunistic, and they don’t limit themselves to headline targets.
This is the part that often gets missed in the boardroom. Geopolitical risk isn’t something that only happens to multinationals and government departments. It moves downstream, through the ordinary businesses that keep those larger organisations running: accountants, logistics firms, IT resellers, manufacturers, and managed service providers among them.
What the NCSC is actually asking organisations to do
The advisory isn’t just a warning, it comes with a checklist. If you’re not sure where your business stands against it, that’s the point of setting it out here.
Review your overall cyber security posture and risk assessment in light of the current threat environment
Sign up to the NCSC’s Early Warning service for timely alerts about malicious activity on your network
Increase monitoring of network activity, particularly anything unusual at your perimeter
Audit your external attack surface, meaning anything internet-facing that an attacker could probe
Follow the NCSC’s guidance on actions to take when the cyber threat is heightened
Know how to report suspicious activity to the NCSC’s Incident Management team
This isn’t about panic
None of this is a call to lock down every system and stop trading. The NCSC itself is measured about the direct threat level. What it’s asking for is proportionate vigilance: treating geopolitical volatility as a normal input into your risk assessment, in the same way you’d think about currency exposure or a key supplier going under.
Turning this into something you actually do
Awareness only helps if it changes behaviour. For most SMEs, that means a handful of practical steps rather than a full security overhaul.
Ask whoever manages your IT when your last risk assessment was done, and whether it accounts for supply chain and third-party exposure
Check that multi-factor authentication is enforced everywhere it can be, especially on email and remote access
Confirm patching is current on internet-facing systems, still the most common way in
Make sure you have a written incident response plan, and that someone other than “whoever’s around” knows what to do if something goes wrong
Ask your key suppliers the same questions a client would want to ask you
The businesses that fare best are the ones paying attention
Geopolitics can feel like background noise, something for the news rather than the boardroom. But cyber risk has always followed geopolitical lines, and the NCSC’s advisory is a reminder that this connection isn’t theoretical. UK SMEs don’t need to become geopolitical analysts. They do need to treat conflict elsewhere in the world as a legitimate input into how they think about security at home.
If you’re not sure how exposed your business is, that’s a conversation worth having with whoever manages your IT, before an incident forces the conversation instead.
