Smaller businesses prime targets for cyberattacks: Chubb
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Small- and medium-sized entities are particular targets of cyber criminals as these firms increasingly digitally transform their business processes, but there are steps they can take to protect themselves, says Chubb Corp. in a report issued Tuesday.
These crimes are low risk for criminals, says the report Cyber Attack Inevitability: The Threat Small & Midsize Businesses Cannot Ignore. “The technology that yields business efficiencies also enables criminal elements to employ their breach and exploitation capabilities quickly, cheaply, and anonymously,” says the report.
But SME leaders too often do not have sufficient information about risk protection and assume their risk of cyberattack is relatively small, says the report.
“Cyber criminals bank on this naiveté” and deploy cybercrime strategies, including stolen email accounts, ransomware and phishing scams and computer heists, the report states. The report says it costs an average of $400,000 to recover from a cyber incident.
The report says steps SMEs can take to protect their businesses include creating a cyberattack response plan, using a secure password manager, educating employees, installing good antivirus software, updating operating systems and applications and protecting network activity.
A survey by QBE Insurance (Singapore) Pte Ltd. in January found that 80% of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Singapore lack cyber insurance and several SMEs are slow to adopt digitalization.
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