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Small Businesses Should Prepare for Cybersecurity Threats, Says Survey

Friday 29 June 2018, 5:10PM

By Beckie Wright

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Small businesses lack cybersecurity knowledge and few have a backup plan in the event of an online attack. According to a survey by Spark Lab, almost 70 per cent of New Zealand SMEs have no crisis management plan for cyberattacks and 40 per cent have no virus protection installed on their company computers and devices. These findings come at a time when cyberattacks in New Zealand are on the rise.

Last year, a quarter of SMEs experienced a digital security breach, up from 18 per cent a year earlier, according to Norton. PWC cyber security partner Adrian van Hest said New Zealand SMEs assumed they were safe from cyber breaches as they did not have the appeal of multinationals. "Your perceptions of information assets have a certain value to you but they also have a market value and by that I mean we see attacks from ransomware," van Hest said.

"New Zealanders live in a high trust society and you can generally do business with most people in good faith, but the challenge is [ensuring] that perspective doesn't change when working digitally."

Josh Bahlman, head of security at Spark security, said small firms lacked the necessary cyber security knowledge. "Small and medium businesses don't necessarily understand the risk until it happens to them," Bahlman said. "Attackers aren't necessarily always targeting specific people or entities. They go for the lowest hanging fruit; they are literally trying to get to everyone and anyone who will engage - people who aren't aware, don't have a plan, don't have protection." He said most attacks were automated and phishing was the most common.

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