Information Protection is the Highest IT Priority for SMBs: Symantec

According to Global SMB Information Protection Survey which was conducted by Applied Research on behalf of Symantec, small and medium sized Businesses are giving high priority to information security. The annual costs of cyber attacks against an average company is reaching £200,000.

The Symantec 2010 SMB Information Protection Survey was conducted on businesses who employed 10 and 499 people across EMEA. It showed that about 67 percent of businesses considered data loss to be an important risk to their firm. 60 percent of them expressed same for cyber attacks. 24 percent prioritized natural disasters.

  • SMBs are showing a lot of interest and investing on information protection. They have ranked data lost and cyber attacks as their top business risks which is ahead of traditional criminal activity, terrorism and natural disaster.
  • Now-a-days, SMBs are spending an average of $51,000 per year. IT staff in the SMBs are spending their time on computer security, recovery, backip and archiving and also are prepared for any disaster. About 87 percent of the SMBs are prepared for disaster.
  • SMBs are worried about loss of critical business information. About 74 percent of SMBs are extremely concerned about losing electronic information.
  • The main trouble that SMBs are facing is lost devices. SMBs think that cyber attacks are a big threat.