Small Companies Avoiding IT Security

Claranet, a managed services expert, organized an IT security event at the House of Lords, UK. Here, Schimdt said that that absence of proper security measures and improper configuration of IT security equipment put all the businesses at risk.

Schmidt added that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have to understand that their small size will not save them from cyber attacks. Any place providing money to hackers is a potential target for them.

Schimdt stated that 90% of the small businesses and computer users employ anti-virus software. Out of these 90%, 10% never update their software. Small businesses have no time to look into the computer security issues.

Large business organizations are doing a fairly good job in stopping security infringements. They are offering free security services and rewiring. These organizations reengineer their IT services themselves and block spam, phishing and Trojan.

Small enterprises usually have limited staff. They normally don't have an expert to think about the security issues. Office managers themselves usually do this work.

As per a forecast of Canada-based Info-Tech Research Group, US enterprises would spend a whooping amount of around $61 Billion on IT security in 2006. Around 1000 IT managers were surveyed by Info-Tech. The number of respondents who said that they have raised their security expenditure was almost ten times more than those who reduced their expenditure, informed Info-Tech senior researcher.

Forrester Research Inc. said in October found in its survey of over 1000 IT managers that enterprises anticipate to expend around 7.75% of their total IT budgets on security in 2006. This is down from last year's 8.9%.

Robert Garigue, Vice President, information integrity, Bell Canada, Montreal, said that the statistics don't show the true picture always. For example, some companies consider IT programs that improve the security as a security investment while others may think in a different way.

Schimdt advised that if small firms have full-time IT managers, then they should familiarize themselves with the security standards.

Related article: Small Organizations Too Can Be Hackers’ Target

» SPAMfighter News - 11/23/2006