Company size doesn’t matter when it comes to cyberattacks

Think hackers are only targeting large corporations for their cyberattacks? Think again. Employees of small to medium size businesses are the prime target of hackers who discovered that they likely have fewer defence resources in place. According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, one in five small businesses falls victim to cybercrime each year. And of those, some 60% go out of business within months of the attack. You will be amazed to learn how much cyber-attacks on ordinary users have increased.

The most common security incidents are phishing, ransomware and user account compromise. Hackers also infiltrate unsecured networks thus the need for hide VPN. Larger organisations are a more frequent target for ransomware or other malware attacks. 48% of enterprises experienced this type of security incident on-premises, compared to 37% among organisations of all sizes. Malware attacks are less common in the cloud: just 21% of respondents in the enterprise sector experienced one within the last four months.

“Smaller companies often underestimate their risk of attack, reasoning that cybercriminals tend to target enterprises because they store more intellectual property (IP) and other sensitive data. But our survey shows that organisations suffer cyberattacks with a similar frequency regardless of their size”, - says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research at Netwrix.

“Every organisation has valuable data, such as customer and employee information, and is, therefore, a target for attackers. What’s more, SMBs are not only a target on their own but as a way into larger enterprises that consume their services”, - concluded Schrader.

This calls for uniform cybersecurity measures to be administered at every level to mitigate attacks irrespective of the company size. Security starts with encrypting your internet surfing with a VPN service.