Small businesses in the UK are shockingly ill-equipped to defend themselves against hackers.
A new report from BullGuard, the cybersecurity company, has revealed that one-third of SMEs rely on free security programmes, a fifth use no endpoint security whatsoever and 43% have no defence plan in place.
The company warns that this lack of digital defences has left small businesses alarmingly at risk of seeing their financial data and customer information exposed.
“Small businesses are not immune to cyber attacks and data breaches and are often targeted specifically because they often fail to prioritize security,” said Paul Lipman, CEO of BullGuard. “Caught between inadequate consumer solutions and overly complex enterprise software, many small business owners may be inclined to skip cybersecurity. It only takes one attack, however, to bring a business to its knees.”
BullGuard also noted that small business owners in general fail to comprehend the danger they are facing, with 60% of the 3,083 small business owners polled not thinking that they were at risk of a cyber-attack.
They are not alone as a EY report published earlier this week noted that two-thirds of businesses see cybersecurity as an afterthought by not involving it in the planning stage of new business initiatives.
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