Would you know if your business was hit by a cyber-attack? According to Nationwide’s third annual survey of over 1,000 business owners with between 1 – 299 employees, many did not. Their survey found that many owners did not understand what even constitutes an attack. Only 13% said they had experienced one, until they saw a list and then that number jumped to 58% (see infographic).
They also found that more than 20% of victims spent at least $50,000 and took more than six months to recover, with 5% saying it cost them even more and took a year or longer to recover.
These attacks are not always on large companies either, many happen to SMB’s. Having a resource in place to be able to manage their network was an issue too. 57% of these smaller companies did not have a dedicated employee or managed service provider to monitor for cyber-attacks, so there’s a good chance some are not even detecting attacks.
A large majority of owners acknowledged that it is important to have your network managed to some capacity and to establish cyber-security best practices many owners still don’t. In fact only around half or less actually followed through on it. To take things a step further, more than half do not have a plan for cyber-attack response, protecting employee data, or even customer data. The consequences for losing customer data alone could be catastrophic as you have likely seen by companies like Equifax recently.
These numbers show the importance of monitoring your network and being prepared for a cyber-attack. At the rate things are going it is simply a matter of when, not if an attack hits your business.
If you have questions or are interested in finding out more about how to protect yourself just give us a call or shoot us an email, we’re here to help.
