UK small businesses trail behind Europe on cyber-security
29 03 2004
New reports indicate that small firms in the UK are less vigilant regarding computer security than their European counterparts, despite the fact that many companies have suffered a virus attack in the past year.
A survey commissioned by McAfee Security found that two in five UK respondents have not updated anti-virus software in the past month, and that a quarter have been attacked by a minimum of five viruses since the beginning of 2003.
Spain, which was found to be most aware of the threats of cyber-crime, currently has laws in place requiring companies to have regularly maintained IT security systems.
"The survey shows people in the UK are thinking about security but not doing anything about it," Jack Clark, technical consultant at McAfee told vnunet. "We need to get people to stop sitting around waiting for an attack and getting out and doing something to ward it off beforehand
Businesses were urged to take preventative measures against cyber-crime including viruses, DNS attacks and increasingly common "phishing" scams, whereby company websites are spoofed by criminals hoping to obtain sensitive consumer information.."
This survey covered 500 small businesses in the UK and five other European countries. Another recent survey by the Department of Trade and Industry found that other types of security threat to large companies have a high cost. One in seven of these attacks cost, on average, about £100,000 and cause business disruption for more than a month.