Small Businesses Unconvinced of the Dangers of Cyber Attacks

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people in bubbleAccording to a study by Kaspersky Labs, small businesses are unconvinced of the dangers posed by cyber-attacks and unprepared to combat them, despite an increasingly reliance on the mobile devices that often offer an easy entry point into organizations for cyber criminals. The study further suggests that one-third of small businesses wouldn’t know what to do if they suffered a security breach, while a quarter admit they wouldn’t be able to recover any lost data.

The reason for this is that organizations have their “heads in the sand” because they’re convinced that they will never be the target of a cyber-attack, with 82 percent of small companies revealing that they believe they aren’t a potential target for hackers and cyber criminals.

However, small businesses with connections to larger organizations as part of a supply chain are frequently targeted for cyber-attacks. These criminals view small businesses as a vulnerable entry point that can be taken advantage of to gain information to be used as part of a greater attack against a larger organization. In fact, 41 percent of small firms were hit in some way by cyber-crime in 2013, about 20 percent affected by a computer virus and 10 percent affected by online fraud.

“While it is encouraging to see the extent to which micro firms are embracing the latest technologies, this must go hand in hand with a strong approach to internet security,” said Kirill Slavin, UK managing director at Kaspersky Lab. “One in ten of those surveyed admitted that an IT security breach would probably cost them their business,” he said.

 

By Joshua Bjerke