44% of UK small business are cyber crime victims

The Internet safety site Get Safe Online commissioned a report on Internet security and small business. Researchers contacted 1,008 businesses with 1-9 employees and questioned them about their experiences over the last two years. The results are interesting and alarming.

60% of small businesses would grind to a halt if their PCs were taken down by cyber crime or IT related issues.
44% of small businesses surveyed have been a victim of cyber crime, including internet scams, identity fraud, phishing and data theft.
Over a third (36 percent) of micro-businesses have suffered from a computer virus.
Nearly a fifth (18%) have been victims of phishing, spyware or hackers in the last two years.
Almost a fifth (19%) said they lost revenue as a result of downtime, the average figure cited as £1,540. This equates to a staggering £750 million in estimated losses across the UK micro-business population.
Two-thirds (66 percent) of businesses surveyed store vital documents on their PCs and 69 per cent also store their customer details on IT equipment - less than a third (32 percent) consider themselves to be fully up to date with current PC/internet security issues.
Only 1 in 20 small businesses have access to dedicated IT support, internally or externally.
Sixty percent of those surveyed said their businesses would grind to a halt if their IT system failed.
Half (49%) of small businesses are unable to track who is accessing what information on their PCs
A quarter of businesses surveyed did not have measurements in place to safeguard their IT systems i.e. only authorised users can access them

The message of the report is that small businesses are under prepared and extremely vulnerable to data loss and cyber crime.

Kotarski Consulting specialises in supporting small businesses. Our record of data recovery and malware removal is excellent. We advise on backup strategies tailored to your needs.

Contact Nick Kotarski for information about our services.

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