Information security has become the top priority in Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMB) agenda, as the annual costs of cyber attacks against an average company reaches £200,000, according to an independent research conducted by Applied Research on behalf of Symantec.
The Symantec 2010 SMB Information Protection Survey, which was conducted on businesses employing between 10 and 499 people across EMEA, showed that 67% of businesses considered data loss to be an important risk to their organisation and 60% said the same for cyber attacks, compared to only 24% for natural disasters.
The survey showed that a mere 28% of SMBs password-protect smartphones, and only 18% rate their disaster preparation as ‘pretty good’ or ‘excellent’. About 77% of businesses say they had been affected in the last year, and 26% admit that they were ‘somewhat’ or ‘extremely’ affected.
According to the survey, 71% of those surveyed agreed to have lost devices over the last year and all firms have some devices, such as USB sticks, which are not password-protected. Around 69% have ensured that Windows-based laptops were password protected, while only 28 % of the smartphones were protected with passcodes.
The firm said that 47% of SMBs have agreed to lost confidential data in the past and huge percentage of loss came from deliberate theft (52 %) as opposed to accidental data loss. Of this figure, 24% was attributed to people outside the organisation, and insiders were found to account for 16% of illegal data loss, with loss through partners at 15%.
Ross Walker, director of small business UK & Ireland at Symantec, said: "The statistics regarding devices being taken ‘on the road’ are particularly concerning given 70% of businesses surveyed in EMEA don’t protect their mobile devices.
"These organisations, and the 30% of firms who don’t password protect their laptops, are running the very real risk of harming their businesses and reputations through losing confidential data by accident."
