Knowledge and Vulnerabilities of Small Businesses in Today’s Cyber Landscape
McAfee Corp., a global leader in online protection, today announced
findings from its Global Small Business Study which surveyed the owners and IT
decision makers at small businesses across six countries to discover their
thoughts and behavior around cybersecurity.
The study,
conducted in collaboration with Dell Technologies, reveals cybersecurity is one
of the greatest concerns of small businesses globally, with 73% of
organizations saying it is one of their biggest risks or vulnerabilities. And
these fears are justified. The data shows that cyberattacks are on the rise, as
44% of small businesses have experienced a cyberattack, and 17% have
experienced more than one. For 67% of the organizations that experienced a
cyberattack, the incident occurred in the last two years, indicating that the
threat of cybercrime has become more prevalent.
For a small
business, even a single cyber incident can be devastating to the bottom line.
For small business owners who experienced a cyberattack, 61% lost more than
$10,000 dealing with the attack. In addition, more than half (60%) of the
business owners and IT decision makers indicated that the cyberattack on their
business took a physical or mental toll on them and/or their staff or
colleagues. In 58% of the cases, the business lost more than a week of valuable
time dealing with IT issues due to the attack.
These cyberattacks
have a significant impact on the finances, customer trust, and operating
efficiency of small companies, causing customer data (38%), passwords (34%) or
other files (34%) to be lost. Many of these attacks (43%) were caused by
someone mistakenly downloading malware by clicking on a phishing link and/or
opening a malicious attachment.
Unfortunately,
small business owners are at a significant disadvantage when faced with
malicious messages that are increasingly realistic and frequent thanks to
artificial intelligence (AI). AI is a scammer's favorite tool, helping
cybercriminals increase the scale, speed and sophistication of phishing and
text message scams.
To help reduce
AI-related concerns and anxieties about data security, small business owners
need AI to beat AI. This cutting-edge technology can work in their favor to
proactively protect them in real-time before they even know they have been
targeted. For example, the AI-driven technology behind McAfee’s McAfee Scam Protection, proactively blocks dangerous links
that appear in text messages, social media, or web browsers and allows users to
engage with text messages, read emails, and browse the web peacefully and
securely.
Cybersecurity Support and Responsibilities
Many small business
owners understand that cyber threats are something they need to plan for and
invest in mitigating. Despite their awareness, only about half (48%) of
business owners/IT decision makers were fully confident in the ability of their
business to prevent cyberattacks. Most small businesses (76%) manage
cybersecurity without the help of others outside their business and almost half
(45%) said they focus on overall general IT issues more than 7 hours a week.
Leave A Comment