SMB: Your Business needs your attention.

This entry in the beginner series is on how little the Small to medium Businesses (SMB) market is doing to protect their data.

SMBs generally do not have the numbers of IT staff nor can they afford the security specialist that are employed by large corporations and government agencies, yet they suffer the same Internet based threats that the largest corporations and governments around the world suffer on a daily basis.
According to recent research by Symantec:

• 59% try to protect computers using antivirus software alone instead of full endpoint protection.
  
• 47% don't back up business files on their desktop hard drive.
  
• 33% lack even simple antivirus protection.

59% of the respondents are either buying just an antivirus solution, or they are using a free product that does not offer complete protection from Malware, Viruses, Key loggers, or Firewall protection. Absolutely amazing considering all of the news concerning identity theft, hacks, unintended disclosure of information, and not to mention efficiency lost due to slower running computers.

47% of the respondents are not performing backups which are truly amazing since some estimates have hard drive failure rates as high as 9% to a low of 2%. For a more in depth look at hard drive failures, look at this white paper from Google has released on hard drive failures, and while it is not an easy read it is one of the most in depth that I have been able to find.

How can 33% of SMBs in the survey not even take the time to get a protection package in place?
Check back as I will try and break down these issues one by one and try and offer suggestions to correct the problems that you may be facing.

Matthew L Davidson
Lexington, KY