Your candidate database is worth more to attackers than you think

Why recruitment agencies face significant cyber risk

A recruitment agency CRM or ATS contains some of the richest personal data available: names, addresses, national insurance numbers, bank details, references, right-to-work documents, and in many sectors DBS check information or health data. That makes your database highly valuable to attackers — and a significant GDPR liability if you don't protect it appropriately.

Contractor payment flows also create financial fraud risk. Attackers monitor email chains between agencies, contractors, and end clients, then intervene at payroll time with fraudulent bank detail change requests. Agencies handling high contractor volumes are a consistent target. Getting Cyber Essentials certified is a demonstrable signal to enterprise clients that you take data security seriously — and it's increasingly expected in procurement processes.

What we do for recruitment and staffing agencies

• Cyber Essentials certification — demonstrates data security credentials to enterprise clients and supports GDPR compliance across your candidate and client database
• Candidate data audit — understand what personal data you hold, how long you keep it, and whether your retention and access controls are defensible
• CRM and ATS access controls — review who has access to your candidate and client databases, under what conditions, and with what audit trail
• Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) — prevent attackers spoofing your domain to redirect contractor payments or harvest candidate credentials
• Payment fraud controls — identify the attack paths in how bank detail changes and payment instructions move between your agency, contractors, and clients
• Incident response planning — clear steps if candidate or client data is compromised, including ICO notification obligations and client disclosure

Start with your domain

Check your domain's email security in under 30 seconds. Our free passive scan reads your public DNS records — no sign-up, no scanning your network.

UK-registered cybersecurity specialists  ·  No vendor affiliation  ·  Priced for independent and group agencies