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In the current world of borderless communications, information has become more crucial than ever. Hence, protecting it from the threats of cyber-attacks, information thief and accidental lost have become increasingly important. This is why it is not shocking to find that more and more small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs with 10 to 499 employees) have started to see the importance of information protection, according to Symantec’s 2010 Global SMB Information Protection Survey.

“Confidential information such as bank account details, credit card information, and customer and employee records are some of the types of information that are under increased risk of exposure for small and mid-sized organizations. For those that have experienced a cyber-attack, the biggest costs were lost productivity and revenue.” – Alex Ong, Country Manager for Malaysia, Symantec.

The report, which was released last month, was based on responses from 2,152 SMS executives and IT decision makers in 28 countries across the world with around 1,000 of them came from the region of Asia Pacific/Japan, which included our country. Click on the jump link to check out what Malaysia SMBs have got to say in the survey.



Symantec 2010 Global SMB Information Protection Survey: Key Findings for Malaysia - Malaysia SMBs surveyed showed a heightened interest and increased investment in information protection. They rank data loss (78 per cent) and cyber-attacks (55 per cent) as their top business risks, ahead of traditional criminal activity, natural disasters and terrorism.

- Two thirds of IT staff time working on information protection, including computer security, backup, recovery and archiving as well as disaster preparedness.

- 88 per cent of SMBs have a disaster preparedness plan, but there is still work to be done as only 22 per cent rate their plan pretty good/excellent.

- 69 per cent of SMBs in Malaysia expect to see a significant change in information protection in the next twelve months, focusing on improvements in the area of security, backup and recovery, and computing performance.

- 89 per cent of SMBs surveyed are somewhat/extremely concerned about losing electronic information. In fact, 39 per cent have lost confidential or proprietary information in the past.

- 100 per cent of companies who have lost data have seen direct losses such as lost revenue or direct financial costs such as money or goods.

- More than one third of businesses polled have lost devices such as laptops and smartphones in the past 12 months.

- 100 per cent have at least some devices that have no password protection and cannot be remotely wiped of their data to protect their confidential business information if lost.

- 76 per cent of the respondents were victims of cyber-attacks in the past year.

- 100 per cent of SMBs saw losses such as expensive downtime, loss of important corporate data as well as personally identifiable information of customers or employees. These losses led to direct costs for all respondents such as lost productivity, lost revenue and loss of customer trust.
 

Symantec's Recommendations
- Educate employees: Develop Internet security guidelines and educate employees about Internet safety, security, and the latest threats. Part of the training should focus on the importance of regularly changing passwords and protecting mobile devices.

- Safeguard important business information: SMBs are facing increased risks to their confidential information so safeguarding this data is critical. One data breach could mean financial ruin for an SMB. Implement a complete protection solution to ensure proprietary information—whether its credit card information, customer data or employee records—is safe.

- Implement an effective backup and recovery plan: Protecting information is more than implementing an antivirus solution. Backup and recovery is a critical component of complete information protection to keep SMBs' desktops, servers and applications running smoothly in case of disruption—whether it's a flood, an earthquake, a virus or a system failure. One outage could mean customer dissatisfaction and costly downtime, which could be catastrophic to the business.

- Secure email and web assets: Select a mail and Web security solution that can help mitigate spam and email threats so SMBs can protect sensitive information and spend more time on day-to-day activities. Spammers and phishers will use current events and social engineering tactics to get users to give up personal information such as credit card and banking information.

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The full report of the survey is available HERE, together with its presentation slides HERE. For more information, log on to Symantec's official website (http://www.symantec.com/).