The Proportion of Businesses That Have Had Breaches in 2017

	Overall	Micro Firms	Small Firms	Medium Firms	Large Firms	Admin/ Real Estate
% experiencing a cyber security breach or attack in 2017	24	17	33	51	65	39

 

Businesses that invest more in cyber security have more breaches than businesses that invest less. This may seem counter intuitive but it’s partly due to businesses that realise they are more at risk such as finance operations then investing more whereas businesses where the online presence is minimal feel less at risk and invest less. There is also the assumption that businesses that invest more in cyber security will be better at identifying such breaches.

Types of Breaches/Attacks

Viruses, spyware or malware	68%
Other impersonating organisation in emails or online	32%
Denial of service attacks	15%
Hacking	13%
Money stolen electronically	13%
Breaches from personally owned devices	8
Personal information stolen	8
Breaches from externally hosted web services	8
Unlicensed or stolen software downloaded	8
Money stolen via fraud emails or websites	6
Software damaged or stolen	5
Breaches on social media	3
Intellectual property theft	1

 

You can see that attacks of various kinds are very common. All businesses must take steps to protect against data breaches and all common forms of cyber-attack

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