Internet Threats Infect Forty Six Percent SMBs in the US

The Cloud Security Company, Panda Security, declared on August 24, 2010 the results of the US edition of its second annual International Barometer of Security at small and medium size businesses (SMBs).

The survey covered around 10,000 SMBs across the world and over 1,500 in the USA. The survey disclosed that 46% of the US SMBs became victims of cybercrime. The figure increased by 2% from previous year's survey.

As per the survey data, 13% of the US small enterprises did not have any security measures and tools in place. Of those, more than half of the figure did not find it a necessity. In addition, 15% had no firewall, 31% of businesses had no anti-spam applications and 23% lacked anti-spyware.

The study finding related to the businesses' investment in malware and security infection rates uncovered the fact that the security budgets remained the same as in the previous year. When inquired if they had anyone working and dedicated to the security management, only 63% of the firms in the US confirmed that they had.

Moreover, the infection ratio at US firms witnessed a slight increase from the last year (46% in 2010 against 44% in 2009). The US SMBs mentioned the USBs/external memory devices and Internet as the top tools and methods through which computer infections enter the company (32%). Among the most popular infection points were E-mail (21%) and downloads/P2P (14%). SMBs were facing viruses as the most popular threat (45%) followed by spyware (23 %).

Sean-Paul Correll, Threat Researcher at PandaLabs, states that most of the SMBs don't have adequate resources such as human capital, time and budget enough to devote to secure their sensitive data and computers, as reported by Dark Reading on August 24, 2010.

An interesting finding of PandaLabs is that 13% of respondents continue to feel security as unimportant. In addition, equally distressing fact is that there are a number of respondents who are aware of the fact that their anti-virus solution is out-of-date.

In both the approaches, the criminals are being invited into business because of negligence and indifference. Little effort and some expenditure could lead to reliable solutions. Even though, a lot of enterprises are continuing to leave the doors of problem wide open.

Related article: Internet Threat Volumes Overwhelm Security Companies

» SPAMfighter News - 8/28/2010