A new survey finds that close to half of in-house communications professionals believe the company they work for is not adequately prepared to communicate on the issue of cyber incidents. The survey, conducted by international crisis-management consultancy Regester Larkin, included 33 in-house professionals in seven different countries. With over 80% believing that the threat of cyber incidents will increase, more than 60% believe their organisations haven't planned to futureproof.

Roberta Ramsden-Knowles, a director at Regester Larkin, says, "As we’ve seen from numerous high-profile cyber incidents, a good communications response to a cyber incident is critical to protecting reputation and minimising subsequent commercial impacts such as a loss of customers or intellectual data."

Off the back of recent TalkTalk and Yahoo attacks, levels of trust in organisations' internal security are being brought into question. Although the survey provides a professional outlook on cyber attacks, in both Talk Talk and Yahoo's cases, customer information was at the centre of the hack. Yet if organisations aren't communicating the correct prevention tactics for potential attacks, employees may find themselves both victims and culprits within the cyber fold.

The Regester Larkin research provides the top measures organisations can take to prevent cyber attacks which include training executives to communicate issues on cyber attacks, working with tech teams, developing strategies to manage attacks and creating post-crisis reviews in the case of their occurrence.