More than 300 Russia-linked cyber incidents have affected UK-headquartered companies since 2022, according to CyberCube data cited in a new report on the economic cost of Russian hostile activity against the UK.
What’s more, this figure is likely a significant undercount, given that attribution is difficult and businesses under-report incidents.
CyberCube’s findings, featured in The Putin Tax: Estimating the Economic Cost of Russian Hostile Activity Against the United Kingdom, published by Labour MP Graeme Downie with Dr Dominic Reed.
The report describes itself as the first attempt to measure the economic burden of Russian hostile activity on the UK, covering cyber attacks, sabotage and threats against critical infrastructure.
It estimated that this activity costs the UK between £2 billion and £2.5 billion a year, taking in cyber attacks, sabotage, threats to critical infrastructure, resilience spending and wider economic disruption.
The authors said this was a floor rather than a definitive assessment, reflecting major gaps in the available data.
As mentioned, attribution challenges, under-reporting and gaps in government data mean many costs remain unquantified, including resilience spending, insurance premiums, investment decisions and wider productivity losses.
The true figure, therefore, is likely to be higher.
Overall, the report has suggested that hostile Russian activity is imposing a measurable and growing cost on the British economy.
CyberCube has estimated there is a 5% chance in a given year that the UK will experience a single attack by a hostile threat actor that would cost all impacted companies $4.4 billion (£3.3 billion)
Alex Tenenbaum, Director of Services at CyberCube, added, “Historical loss data, while useful, is often insufficient on its own. Attribution remains difficult, and many incidents are under-reported.
“The most promising approach involves combining known incidents with catastrophe modelling and wider economic exposure analysis.”
