For SMBs, Security Threats are on the Rise

SMBs may not consider themselves targets of cyber-attacks despite the awareness being ever present. As a result, many SMBs are not implementing the proper safeguards to protect their information.

SMBs are just as easily targeted as large enterprises, and the damage can be just as severe, if not worse. For this market, the attacks could, believe it or not, come from within, with the guilty perpetrators being terminated employees and employees who have issues with their bosses or other coworkers.

A 2011 IBM security report said that while external hacking gets the headlines, internal breaches are more prevalent than actually reported.

Conversely, one could argue that in the small company environment, managers and employees work more closely together so that there is less opportunity for intentional breaches. When a company is small and has only a few employees, internal security breaches may or may not be less likely to occur and easier to detect than in a larger organization.

However, employees in small companies are often given more independence when it comes to work, so managers may be more trusting. In those cases, there is a perfect opportunity for the employee to steal data or bandwidth, or use the network for personal Web surfing, emailing, and chat.

A recent white paper breaks down the SMB security breach topic, citing the example of US Airways and how an insider data breach at the US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA) exposed sensitive financial data of some 3,000 US Airways pilots, according to reports. It was a disgruntled, former Chief-Pilot at US Airways that leaked the information to Leonidas in an Excel spreadsheet in late 2009.

Of course, US Airways can hardly be considered an SMB. So, given that, should it matter that SMBs can become targets, and are they really even a concern?

The white paper from Kapersky Labs says yes; a CERT Insider Threat Survey from 2010 found that of 523 respondents, 37 percent came from organizations with fewer than 500 employees.

“Small firms are as likely to employ those who make inadvertent mistakes as they are to have the kinds of internal controls and IT expertise that will spot malicious or merely suspicious activity early, so problems can fester and persist,” writes the report.

Some breaches are deliberate and others are unintentional. Either way they can put a business’s network and the data on it at risk, and result in lost productivity and/or direct monetary loss. Read the white paper in its entirety for the full details.

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