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:
Source: Zurich Insurance Group