Over the past year, Cyber Wardens has spoken with over 2,000 small business owners and employees about cyber safety.
They represented the breadth and incredible diversity in Australian small businesses, from startups to multi-decade companies, people in regional and rural areas, and different ages, genders and industries.
Their insights are the foundation of cutting-edge new research we are proud to release today, Building a culture of cyber safety in Australian small businesses.
From the research, it’s clear that every small business is different in their awareness of cyber safety, level of concern, and preparedness to respond to cyber threats. Some businesses are leading the way by thinking and talking regularly about cyber security, while many are unaware of their vulnerability and are yet to take steps to protect themselves.
Research highlight: Gaps in basic cyber safety skills
Despite 8 in 10 small businesses experiencing a cyber threat in their lives, most small businesses had not implemented four critical safety measures to protect them from online attacks.
- Multi-factor authentication absent in 50% of small business cyber defences: When you turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA), you set a virtual alarm for your small business. Worryingly, there was a significant drop in small businesses enabling MFA for their email accounts, despite email scams leading the type of cyber crimes targeting small businesses.
- Sharing passwords is common practice: About 5 in 10 small businesses still record their passwords in one place, like a shared word document. If a cyber criminal gained access to this, it would be the recipe for disaster.
- Software updates are lagging in half of small businesses: When your software is not up to date, it leaves cracks in the system that cyber criminals can sneak through. According to the research, half of small businesses don’t have automatic software updates turned on.
- Only 1 in 2 small businesses are backing up daily: If a cyber attack hit your business tomorrow, a back up is key to ensure your business can respond and recover. Yet, many don’t have their important business information saved or regularly update it.
With Cyber Wardens, you can keep your digital floors clean and free of cyber criminals fishing.
