New research from internet service provider, Beaming, has revealed that in 2018 UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were affected by cybercrime to the tune of £17.4 billion.
Business cybercrime is the flavour of the month for fraudsters, with hacking, phishing and data breaches affecting millions of UK companies and causing billions of pounds of damage each year.
As part of Beaming’s annual cybersecurity report, research consultancy Opinium conducted a survey of 500 business leaders.
The survey found that almost two-thirds of UK SMEs with between 10 and 49 employees were the victims of cybercrime within the last 12 months. That works out to around 130,000 businesses across the nation at a cost of £13.6 billion pounds.
For those businesses with less than 10 workers, a mammoth 1.72 million businesses were the victims of online attacks, however, the overall cost is much lower at £705 million.
Whilst larger SMEs with between 50 and 249 members of staff were found to have suffered a similar fate and there were 21,000 victims of cybercrime in the past year at a cost of £3.1 billion – taking the total overall cost for SMEs to £17.4 billion.
With the constant technological advancements, SMEs need to take greater measures to protect against these risks.
Link: Small businesses hit hardest by £17bn cybercrime bill in 2018
