McAfee revealed the findings from its Global Small Business report, which surveyed small business owners and IT decision-makers across six countries to understand their opinions and behavior around cybersecurity. The survey, conducted in partnership with Dell Technologies, shows cybersecurity is the primary concern of small businesses worldwide, with 73% of leaders expressing it as one of their biggest threats or vulnerabilities.
Report data shows that cyber attacks are continuously rising, as 44% of small businesses have encountered a cyberattack, and 17% have experienced more than one.
67% of the organizations that experienced a cyberattack, the incident occurred in the last two years.
For a small business, even a single cyber incident can ruin the bottom line. Of small business owners who encountered a cyberattack, 61% lost more than $10,000 dealing with the attack.
In addition, more than half (60%) of 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 impact the finances, customer trust, and operating efficiency of small businesses, causing customer data (38%), passwords (34%), or other files (34%) to be lost.
43% of cyber attacks were caused by someone mistakenly downloading malware by clicking on a phishing link and/or opening a malicious attachment.
Nearly one-third (24%) of business owners worry about cyberattacks daily. Less than half (46%) of the business owners or IT decision-makers are confident in employees’ ability to take necessary steps to protect company devices and IP. A majority (68%) of small business owners believe their cybersecurity risks are increasing.
One-third (30%) of the small businesses that experienced cyberattacks reported the attacks occurred due to a vulnerability in outdated or unpatched software that was breached.
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.
Also Read: Xfinity Suffered data breach, exposing 35.8 million customer’s personal information
