Symantec’s most recent National Small Business Survey says the following:
- In 2011, over three-quarters of small businesses had a security breach;
- The average cost of a security breach was £15k – £30k;
- 1 in 20 breaches les to business disruption of between a week and a month;
- 83% of small businesses have no formal cyber-security plan.;
- Half of attacks targeted SMBs.
The report makes the point that cyber criminals target SMBs because they have more money than individuals and their security is much weaker than that of larger organisations. In other words, Small and Medium Businesses should expect to see substantial growth in the number and effectiveness of cyber attacks on them.
Part of effective defence against cyber threats may well be a security solution such as that available from Symantec or Sophos. The better SMB approach is to start by adopting a basic cyber security strategy that deals cost effectively with the most obvious business-level vulnerabilities and then moves on to look at appropriate technical security solutions. The Green Paper ‘Cybersecurity – a Critical Business Risk’ describes a useful 7-step cyber security strategy.
