Three-Quarters of SMBs Can't Repel Cyber-Attacks

Millions of the UK’s small businesses aren’t confident they can withstand a cyber-attack, with resources frequently diverted to other areas, according to new research from Arctic Wolf.

The security operations vendor polled over 500 decision-makers in the UK working at firms with fewer than 250 employees to better understand their cyber challenges.

It found that three-quarters (73%) believe their organization lacks the in-house expertise and capabilities to defend against cyber-attacks. The figure could amount to as many as 4.5 million of the UK’s SMBs, the vendor claimed.

More than half (55%) of respondents said cybersecurity issues are regularly deprioritized in favor of other business goals.

This is having a major impact on security operations (SecOps): two-fifths (39%) of respondents said their teams are overwhelmed by security alerts and a similar number (34%) don’t have time to investigate every alert.

The findings chime with a recent Trend Micro study that revealed that over half of SecOps teams in global organizations are drowning in alerts and 55% aren’t confident in prioritizing and responding to them.

As a result, 70% admitted feeling emotionally distressed by the continuous pressure. This can impact both productivity and staff churn at a time when it’s already difficult to fill key security analyst positions.

Christina Richmond, program vice president, security services, at IDC, argued that SMBs should consider outsourcing such capabilities to cloud-hosted security service providers.

“Cyber-attacks, such as ransomware, are growing more advanced by the day, and organizations that fall victim are experiencing not only short-term financial and op ..

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