UK Study: SMB’s report more security breaches in 2013

A new study released by PwC and InfoSecurity Europe, indicates that the large increase in security breaches is occurring in the Small Business segment (under 50 employees) and that these businesses are “now experiencing incident levels previously only seen in larger organisations.”   

Below are some of the report highlights: 

• 63% of small businesses were attacked by an unauthorized outsider in the last year (up from 41% a year ago)
• 23% of small businesses were hit by denial-of-service attacks in the last year (up from 15% a year ago)
• 15% of small businesses detected that outsiders had successfully penetrated their network in the last year (up from 7% a year ago)
• 9% of small businesses know that outsiders have stolen their intellectual property or confidential data in the last year (up from 4% a year ago)
• 57% of small businesses suffered staff-related security breaches in the last year (up from 45% a year ago)
• 17% of small businesses know their staff broke data protection regulations in the last year (up from 11% a year ago)

 Good News/Bad News

For the SMB segment, there has been a rise in the cost associated with breaches.  The average cost for to a small business for its worst breach was between 35,000 to 65,000 pounds. 

The silver lining here is that senior management does understand the risk of cyber-crime and there is an increase effort to prioritize investment and education in this arena.

Tags: Cyber Crime, Data breach, Malware