A NEW savvy security service can help unsuspecting workers safeguard their email accounts against the potential damage caused by a cyber-attack.

Developed by the Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC), SwiftPass proactively monitors business email accounts to give an instant alert when their passwords have been affected by a data breach.

It is aimed at quickly identifying when an account has been compromised and to give immediate guidance on the steps that should be taken to prevent malicious activity – all without impacting its customers’ personal emails.

After being alerted to a potential problem, businesses can then check for any unusual activity on the accounts and change their passwords to secure it before it is too late.

This way, the SBRC says that even if hackers were to pass on details to others, the account password will have already been changed, rendering criminal access impossible.

SwiftPass – which acts as part of a client’s wider cyber-security set-up – also monitors the numerous websites where hackers commonly trade details of stolen usernames and passwords.

It can also search the internet using a series of keywords to help businesses keep watch on what is being said about them online – a service similar to Google Alerts.

The SBRC’s chief ethical hacker, Gerry Grant, said: “Cyber-attacks are taking place at an alarming rate, but the vast majority of these can be easily prevented if caught and responded to as early as possible.

“This new email monitoring service will be extremely useful to businesses as it gives extra assurance that the security of their e-mail accounts is being monitored as part of their wider cyber-security response.

“Without intruding on customers’ personal emails, it will help users find out if their password has been breached and details leaked by providing reminders to alert them to a potential problem as quickly as possible.

“They can then check for any unusual activity and change their password to secure the account before it’s too late. This way, even if hackers were to pass on their details to others, the account password will have already been changed, making access impossible for the criminals.

“The system is cheap and incredibly easy to use, so we would recommend that organisations take this step to give them that extra peace of mind when it comes to protecting employee email accounts.”

SwiftPass costs £5 per user per month, a price the SBRC hopes will ensure all Scottish businesses can afford to run the service.

The new service was launched as insurance brokerage Lockton warned that UK businesses were overconfident in their cyber-security planning and underestimated the “seismic aftershock” that follows a breach.

In a new report, the company said half of UK firms expected to be fully operational within 48 hours of a cyber breach, with only two per cent believing the effects will last longer than ten days.

But Peter Erceg, Lockton’s senior vice-president of global cyber and technology, warned: “It can take several months, if not years, to become entirely operational again after a large-scale breach – and for some firms a full recovery may be a bridge too far. UK businesses are currently unprepared for the seismic waves that can decimate an organisation caught unaware.”

The study also exposed holes in firms’ incident response planning, with 63 per cent recognising reputational damage as a risk of a breach, but only 26 per cent of respondents including PR and communications chiefs in their incident response plans.