» Small Businesses: what you need to know about cyber security

Last year, an alarming 87% of small businesses suffered an information security breach, the worst of which cost £65k. These findings, from the 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey published by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills, highlight the risks businesses are taking through poor business continuity and disaster recovery planning, testing and inadequate investment in resources. Read more ….

The BIS survey also reveals the following:

•             Small businesses reported an average of 17 cyber-attacks in 2013, up by almost 50% on 2012

•             Attacks originated both inside and outside the organisations affected

•             63% of small businesses were attacked by an unauthorised outsider in the last year – up from 41% a year ago

•             15% of small businesses detected that outsiders had successfully penetrated their network in the last year – up from 7% a year ago

•             23% of small businesses were hit by denial-of-service attacks in the last year – up from 15% a year ago

The survey found incident management in small businesses ‘generally weak’, which is particularly apt in light of the number of high-profile service outages and data breaches that occurred in 2013.

Read the 2013 Information Security Breaches Survey Executive Summary in full.