Small Business Big Target for Hackers and Thieves

Just because the business you run is small doesn’t mean you’re invisible to online hackers; on the contrary. Larry Barrett at Internetnews.com takes a look at McAfee’s latest report on cyber threats to small business.

McAfee has some sobering statistics for small and midsized businesses that are increasingly under attack from hackers at the same time they're downsizing their security and IT departments to cut costs.

On Wednesday, the security software vendor release a report, titled The Security Paradox, that found the average mid-sized company lost $43,000 to security breaches in the past year and overall cyber attacks have surged 322 percent for SMBs worldwide.

Meanwhile, 71 percent of IT directors at small and mid-sized businesses believe there is some chance a serious data breach could put their company out of business yet almost the same amount

This paradox is especially problematic, according to McAfee, because almost half of all mid-sized companies surveyed believe that larger companies (501 or more employees) are more at risk for a security attack.