While the number remains low, there’s been a robust rate of increase in the number of small and medium-sized businesses tuned in to the cyber attack risks they face, Zurich Insurance Group said in a new survey.
About 11 percent of respondents said they’re worried about cyber crime, nearly triple the 4 percent figure from 2013. Similarly, 14 percent said they’re troubled by the reputational damage cyber attacks can cause, up from 8 percent three years ago.
For the survey, Zurich polled 2,600 C-suite executives and managers at small and medium-sized businesses in 13 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific (Australia, Austria, Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and the U.S.). The Swiss insurer said that these are the fastest-growing perceived risks since its survey began in 2013.
Why wouldn’t businesses be tuning into cyber attack risks at a higher rate? The RAND Corp. found that for the average company, the issue points to a relative lack of cost. Its recent study determined that the typical cost of a breach is about $200,000, with most cyber events costing companies less than 0.4 percent of their annual revenues—a number roughly equal to an average company’s annual information security budget.
The Zurich study identified a number of other risk worries. Among them:
- Risk awareness is rising across the board in the U.S., with technology failures and vulnerabilities scoring near the top. About 18 percent of small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. are also concerned about theft, up from 9 percent in 2013.
- Fourteen percent said they’re worried about damage relating to corporate transport, a surge from 6 percent in 2013.
- About 31 percent said that the impact of competition on margins was the greatest risk facing their business. That’s down a bit from previous years.
- Lack of consumer demand is the second-greatest risk, according to 30 percent of respondents, up from 24 percent in 2013.
- Just 7 percent of small and medium-sized businesses don’t see any risk for their business in 2016.
Source: Zurich Insurance Group