Small businesses ignore peril of cybercrime

Nearly half of small companies think that cybercrime is an issue for larger enterprises, according to a new survey.

The study of 600 IT managers in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across Europe found that 47 per cent of respondents assumed that they were too small for criminals to bother attacking them.

The research, carried out by polling company ICM, found that 58 per cent of European SMEs were simply 'not concerned' about becoming victims of cybercrime, despite almost three quarters (73 per cent) of them citing online access and availability as being critical to their businesses.

According to Greg Day, senior security analyst at anti-virus firm McAfee who commissioned the survey, internet criminals don't discriminate when it comes to the size of businesses they target.

"Every SME, even very small ones, will have customer details or financial information that will be of use to a cyber criminal," said Day.

According to the figures from the research, 28 per cent of respondent's said their companies only spent one hour a week on proactive IT security management. Nearly a fifth of respondents (19 per cent) said that hackers attacking their systems could put them out of business.

Another fifth of the surveyed IT managers said their companies had been the victim of a hacking incident and the same percentage said it took a week to recover.

The survey found that 90 per cent of respondents thought they were 'adequately protected' yet 36 per cent of them admitted that they simply accepted the default settings on their IT equipment which are often not in line with their specific business needs. In Europe, Spanish SMEs were the most likely to accept the default settings, where as German SMEs were the least likely.

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