SMBs Face Serious Security Budget, Workforce Limitations
This year, 48% of SMBs said they had less than $5,000 budgeted to spend on IT security.
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Despite increasing cyberthreats, SMBs are expected to do more with less when it comes to IT security implementation, and many have less to spend this year than last year.
That’s according to Untangle‘s second-annual SMB IT Security Report, which examines the current state and trends of IT security of more than 300 SMBs globally, compiling data on budget and resource constraints, breaches, IT infrastructure, cloud adoption and more.
Untangle’s Heather Paunet
Heather Paunet, Untangle‘s vice president of product management, tells us SMBs are more vulnerable due to the fact that they don’t have dedicated IT staff that know about and can implement the right solutions to protect them.
“SMBs also remain targets because hackers know that they are less likely to have strong enough network security in place than larger enterprise companies,” she said.
This year, nearly one-half (48%) of SMBs said they had less than $5,000 budgeted to spend on IT security, versus 54% last year, Paunet said. Also, 52% said they do not have an in-house IT security professional on staff and therefore distribute the responsibility across other roles.
“I would have expected the budget to go up as SMBs are becoming more aware of the cybersecurity risks they face,” she said. “Eighty percent of SMBs are now ranking IT security as a priority and 56% … answered a definitive ‘yes’ that recent security breaches are affecting the way they think of their security road map. This shows that SMBs are taking security seriously and that they know that IT security is a fundamental aspect of business continuity that they need to plan for.”
Other key findings include:
Forty percent of SMBs operate in at least five physical locations, including remote access workers.
Most SMBs have up to 75% of their IT infrastructure deployed on the cloud.
A majority of respondents described their IT infrastructure deployment as cloud-based (public or private).
MSPs have an opportunity to provide services for customers without having to go on-site to maintain them, Paunet said.