Small Companies See Bigger Risks - Twenty-Four Seven Security

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December 12, 2007
Small Companies See Bigger Risks

As we approach the end of the year, the security surveys are stacking up like wide-bodied jets waiting to touch down at JFK. The most recent, and most informative, survey that has come to my attention asked 12 questions and received 455 responses, mostly from SMBs. The survey was conducted by eMediaUSA.

The most salient finding is that while 96% of enterprises use anti-virus software, another 93% deploy firewalls, and 80% engage anti-spam, a full 42% of them do not consider their networks secure. One of the central reasons for that is that almost a third of the companies experienced a security breach in the past year. Another 55% used a combination of software, appliances and hosted services to protect their network.

71 percent of companies say that their main IT fear is either downtown or security breeches. Also, 39% still feel that email viruses pose the biggest risk.

So what are companies doing to allay these fears? While a majority (55%) spend less than 10% of their IT budget on security, a full 77% percent said they thought this was enough to keep secure, so clearly don't expect companies to raise security spending much in 2008. The measures they do plan to take, though, with at least 48% of respondents said they plan to better educate their employees on security awareness, while another 25% plan to make senior management more aware of security issues.

So education is where most corporate minds seems to be at, but if that doesn't work, and breeches keep happening (many say that SMBs have become the low-hanging fruit of the cybercriminal) count on the greater awareness leading to greater spending.