Many small companies are vulnerable to data loss through theft and virus infections. Yet most companies believe that their security is well secured.
File loss leads to despair!
This according to research among 400 representatives of SME companies in the Digi-conscious Program, a collaboration of the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and industry.
The State Secretary of Economic Affairs and the director of eNederland have launched a campaign to create awareness amongst Small and Medium Enterprises to deal with digital security.
76 percent of those surveyed believe that their security is good to very good. Yet in 82 percent of the companies no formal agreements are made on, for example, safe working and what workers may do online.
Training of employees in the confidential and secure management of data in the business is done in less than one quarter of the companies. Most companies rely blindly on the good will and personal understanding of their employees. Twenty percent also has no back-up policy. Without a back-up important data on company computers are forever lost in case of a disk crash or other form of data loss.
Almost one quarter of the surveyed companies has experienced digital incidents. These contain primarily the theft of a laptop or PC (56 percent), a virus infection (54 percent), a defect in the infrastructure (31 percent) or a spyware infection (30 percent). It emerged at 60 percent of the victims incur significant damage.
It is notable that most incidents occur more frequently in companies that show it to be aware of security.