51% of small business admit to leaving customer data unsecure
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Dear valued subscribers,
The?threat of cyberattacks?continues to increase and evolve, forcing everyone from federal governments to individual consumers to consider how to best protect themselves.
According to a new survey from?Digital.com, one group that may need to take cybersecurity more seriously is small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). From March 11-14, 2022, Digital.com surveyed 1,250 owners of businesses with 500 employees or less, finding that less than half of them currently have measures in place to protect them from cyberattacks.
Not only does this lack of cybersecurity increase the risk that companies will lose data or have operations interrupted, but it makes customers who share their information with these businesses vulnerable as well.
Key Findings
More than half of small businesses don’t have cybersecurity measures in place
Only 42% of SMB owners say their companies currently have cybersecurity measures in place.
Twenty-one percent don’t have any measures in place but are in the process of developing and implementing cybersecurity plans.
Meanwhile, 30% of SMB owners say their companies have no cybersecurity measures in place, and 7% aren’t sure about the state of cybersecurity at their companies.
How a business operates plays a role in whether it has protections in place. Companies that operate in person are less likely than those that conduct all or some business online to be protected against cyberattacks.
Forty-five percent of companies that operate in-person don’t have any protection against cyberattacks. Twenty-seven percent of companies that solely operate online, and 21% of companies that do business online and in-person don’t have cybersecurity measures in place.
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However, in today’s hyper-connected environment, even companies that do most of their business offline may not be as safe as they think, according to small business and startup consultant Dennis Consorte.
“Cyberattacks can occur in any context,” he says. “A company that does most of their business in-person may still process transactions across an insecure connection, or they may store data in an unencrypted format, such as credit card numbers in an unencrypted spreadsheet.”
Consorte also points out that cyberattacks may not target businesses specifically. “Hackers may attack the servers at the?hosting?service that stores a company’s web files. There have also been a number of high profile data center fires where files were destroyed. In some cases, backup files were in the same physical location and were destroyed, too. Anything is possible, so it’s helpful to secure your data, and keep encrypted backups of that data at a different physical location than the source.”
6 in 10 small businesses aren’t protected because they think they’re ‘too small to be a target’
Among businesses with no cybersecurity protection, 59% say it’s because they’re too small to be a target, far outpacing any other reason given for not having protective measures in place.
According to Consorte, that belief is a misconception.
“Companies of all sizes should take cybersecurity seriously,” he says. “Customer data is valuable, and bad actors will stop at nothing to get it. In fact, they may target SMBs because they have less budget for protecting their customers’ information and are therefore softer targets.”
Twenty-five percent of these small businesses also say they don’t need cybersecurity because their online business is limited. Nineteen percent cite cost as a reason for not implementing cybersecurity practices, saying it’s too expensive.
For businesses that have cybersecurity measures in place, or are developing a plan, the most popular forms of protection are antivirus software (58%), firewalls (49%), VPNs (44%), password management tools (39%), and secure payment processing tools (38%).
Best regards,