As per the data from he 2010 corporate end user survey by Trend Micro’s, the small businesses find Viruses, Trojans, data-stealing malware, and leaking of information as biggest IT concerns.
This survey included 1600 end users belonging to U.S, U.K, Germany and Japan, who were employed full time with email and internet access at their work places and working for about five hours per week on computer. The small businesses in U.K, U.S and Germany are defined as the companies having 500 or less employees, wheras in Japan it is 250 or less.
According to the data collected, businesses were more concerned because of viruses (63%), Trojans (60%), data stealing malware (59%) and data leaks (56%). Phishing scams and spams were found to be least concerning.
Inspite of the existing online threats, the SMBs fail to have protective measures for their businesses online activities. They are found to be 23% less protective than large companies. In Japan the difference is very much striking, with 81% of large companies implementing measures for data leak, whereas only 47% of small companies implemented these policies. Among the companies having data leak prevention policies, most of the employees in those organizations are likely to have recieved training in that aspect. In case of U.S, 74% of larger companies find data leaks as a serious issue, while only 49% of small and medium sized businesses think so. In case of U.K, 73% of the large companies are aware of this threat and found to take measure, while it is only 63% in small firms.
This means that employees in larger companies are more aware of the confidential information and the measures to protect them when compared to small and medium sized industries.
On making research about the policies to be adapted to prevent data stealing malware, the measures adviced were, installation of security software, implementing security policies and limiting internet access. With all the above measures taken, 21% of employees in large companies still feel that much better and advanced measures can be used to prevent malware stealing, while 35% of the emplyes in small businesses say that their company could have educated them in a much better way about the threat.