Ninety per cent of UK websites affected by 'serious' security flaws

Security firm CyberScanner claims that 117,638 of the top UK sites harbour security flaws

Web security firm CyberScanner has claimed that "serious" security flaws affect almost nine out of ten of the UK's top websites.

According to the company's research, 87 per cent of 135,000 of the biggest websites based in the UK harbour one or more security flaws.

Using what it calls a "non-intrusive monitoring" technique, it found that out of 135,035 UK sites, 117,638 of them contained potentially harmful security flaws, the most common issues being cross-site scripting flaws, SQL injection, cross-site request forgery, and SSL certificates.

Using what it claims is "one of the most efficient vulnerability scanning technologies in the world", CyberScanner used a tool called CyberMonitor to conduct the scan on the UK web sites between 16 and 23 March.

"Scanning throughout the UK, the scanner was also able to identify that out of 24,723 websites commercially based in London, 86 per cent had serious security issues, while 85 per cent of websites in Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol, were also found to have vulnerabilities," the firm claimed.

The numbers are rather worrying, particularly considering how companies in the UK are now just one month away from the EU's GDPR deadline because the statistics show that the vast majority of UK based businesses are still vulnerable to a cyber-attacks and hackingand not prepared.

CyberScanner's technical director, Reza Moaiandin, said that with GDPR just one month away, organisations need to improve their security - especially with websites being the very public face of many organisations.

"When we started CyberScanner, we did so out frustration for the lack of affordable cyber security products available to inform, and protect Small and Medium enterprises against a sea of ever-growing security threats," said Moaiandin.

He continued: "Now that GDPR is just a month away, it shows just how much work companies across the UK still need to put into their online defences and security strategies."

CyberScanner's website scan is a brand new digital security tool that routinely scans websites to identify against over 100,000 vulnerabilities using specialist finger printing technology.

The scanner is considered one of the most comprehensive web security platforms in the world, covering both active and passive issues.