Online security flaws in UK Small Businesses

Symantec Corp reports basic online security flaws in UK and European small businesses, in spite of the fact that the companies appear to be aware of the problems.

25% of UK small businesses have had a recent online security breach which resulted in a loss of business and 13% incurred a financial loss. In Europe the figures were 17% and 8%.

UK small businesses have 47% of total UK employees and 37% of total UK turnover, so this is an issue of importance.

43% of those surveyed thought that online security was the sole responsibility of the IT Manager and 34% thought the Managing Director solely responsible.

Only 41% of UK small businesses use an outsourced IT specialist company to provide online security.

31% of those surveyed said mistakes by employees caused the system to crash or information to be lost and 13% said this had a negative financial effect.

42 percent update their business IT security daily, 15 % weekly, 6% monthly, and 3% yearly.

Online security is a now major concern for UK small businesses and spam email is probably the most annoying aspect of this and a regular entry point of viruses infected emails.

Our UK Search Business Directory, which has 1.6 million free business listings, has a spam proof email listing for businesses, so that their email addresses can’t be scraped and then spammed.