A new report that reveals UK SMEs continue to underestimate the impact of a cyber-attack

A member of the UK200Group of independent accountancy and law firms has today commented on a new report that has revealed UK small businesses continue to underestimate the impact a cyber-attack could have on their operations.

The Small Business Reputation and the Cyber Risk report, launched by the Government’s Cyber Streetwise campaign, found that amongst those surveyed, less than a third of business owners (29%) who have not experienced a cyber breach, believe the potential damage is an “important consideration”.

Yet for companies who have suffered a cyber breach the impact is long-lasting. One in four (26%) have been unable to grow in line with previous expectations, and almost a third (31%) said it took over six months for the business to get back on track. Quality of service is also a risk; those who experienced a cyber breach found it caused customer delays (26%) and impacted the business’ ability to operate (93%).

Andy McDougall, director at UK200Group member Dains IT Solutions, part of Dains Accountants, said:

“The problem for SME businesses is keeping your IT systems safe and secure can be a complex task and there is no single product or service that will provide complete guarantee of security for your business. The threat of cyber-attacks in many different guises is growing significantly and can be hugely disrupting with very negative consequences.

“However there are practical, relatively low cost measures that you can take to minimise risk. Moving your servers to a secure UK based data centre or the cloud is one significant step, by utilising this secure environment and infrastructure, the business has 24/7 monitoring and significantly more security and protection that an SME would ever consider investing themselves. In a survey conducted by the cloud industry forum 75% of private UK companies sighted security concerns over moving to the cloud, yet 99% of UK companies have never experienced a security breach when using a cloud service. Therefore, adopting a Hybrid model is a good policy to give back up and protection for the data and network without feeling the loss of control. Good connectivity with fail over is also a consideration.”