While they are not findings of great surprise to our penetration testing professionals here at Sec-Tec, the results of a recent survey of UK IT and security managers – as described by Information Age – should make for interesting reading for many of those who may look to use our services to shore up their firm's current security practices.
The poll of such professionals at 102 UK companies with workforces of between 100 and 5,000 employees examined how smaller businesses were dealing with the ever-heightening cyber threat level, and considered whether it was merely larger organisations that came under attack.
Security breaches widespread even among small firms
An incredible three quarters (75%) of the surveyed organisations said they had experienced a security breach or infection in the last 12 months, with this increasing to 85% for businesses with up to 1,000 employees.
With regard to the frequency and type of breaches suffered by organisations, the average number of known breaches reported was 2.1, while data breaches, ransomware, targeted attacks and zero-day exploits were the threats rated of greatest concern.
Curiously, organisations with fewer than 1,000 employees recorded twice the rate of recorded ransomware infections compared to firms with between 2,500 and 5,000 employees, at 6% and 3% respectively.
Meanwhile, the greatest security gaps - where IT managers' level of concern most outstripped how they evaluated their security capabilities to be - was in dealing with targeted and zero-day attacks. Respondents also cited the threat of data breaches, botnet activity and malicious activity from insiders.
Less than a fifth (19%) of those quizzed said that their web security was inspecting SSL traffic for threats.
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Our team here at Sec-Tec appreciates that you may be far from a technical mind, and that the thought of ordering penetration testing from a firm of specialists like ours may be intimidating. However, we also serve many more experienced buyers, and can cater to their most specific requirements from penetration testing.
Don't allow glaring breaches in your own small - or larger - firm's IT infrastructure to go unaddressed, at potential dire cost to your company. Instead, talk to the Sec-Tec team about our know-how in such areas of penetration testing expertise as PSN health checks, desktop security assessments, Wi-Fi security assessments and many more.