Size doesn't matter for cyber criminals

SANTA CLARA,USA : Fifty-two per cent of small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in North America felt they were too small to be of any value to cyber criminals and that they were adequately protected by default security settings, a recent survey found.

The McAfee survey, Does Size Matter? The Security Challenge of the SMB, found that a 32 per cent of SMBs in the US and Canada it studied had been attacked more than four times in the last three years.

The survey sampled 500 IT decision-makers from companies with 1,000 - 2,000 employees.

The research concluded that a quarter of those attacked (26 per cent) took at least a week to recover, a devastating length of time to be offline for small businesses who conduct business and sales via the Web.

Recovery time in Canada was even greater, with a third (36 per cent) taking a week or more to fully restore their systems.

The report highlighted the gap between the perceptions of SMBs towards security issues and the realities of cyber attacks.

"For businesses of all sizes, viruses, hacker intrusions, spyware and spam can lead to lost or stolen data, computer downtime, decreased productivity, compliance issues, lost sales and even loss of reputation," said Darrell Rodenbaugh, senior vice president of the mid-market segment at McAfee. "Just because a business is small does not mean it is immune to security threats."

SMBs were allowing themselves to be vulnerable to IT attacks by failing to allocate an appropriate amount of time and resources to security.

Almost half of SMBs (42 per cent) dedicated just one hour a week to proactive IT security management, despite the fact that almost one in five (21 per cent) acknowledged that an attack could put them out of business.

"Since many of the SMBs surveyed have just one hour per week to spend on IT security, our advice is to find a trusted partner that can help them assess their risk," said Rodenbaugh. "Choosing a managed solution and outsourcing security helps SMBs free up their time to focus on other priorities and feel confident that their IT security needs are being covered by an expert. It can also mean security technologies that are otherwise out of their price range will be available to them."

SMBs might not be as safe from security attacks as they think. Eighty-eight percent of respondents believed they were 'adequately protected,' yet 43 per cent of them admitted that they simply accept the default settings on their IT equipment, settings which are often not in line with their specific business needs