A global survey has shown that SMEs in the Asia-Pacific region are falling behind in IT security.
The survey put the Asia Pacific region at the bottom of the list behind Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Americas.
“With global IT attacks against business on the increase we wanted to look at how accounting and business advisory firms, as well as their clients, looked at IT security,” said Don Timmins, Chairman of BKR International.
He added: “Professional companies look after increasing amounts of third party data but it appears that not enough attention is being paid to IT security measures that will safeguard that information.”
The survey showed that only 11 percent of SMEs in the Asia Pacific region reported that their team members had regular IT awareness training, compared to 44 percent in EMEA.
“Companies in the Asia Pacific region need to immediately implement regular information security awareness training to keep all stakeholders’ interests well protected,” said Stephen Roger, Executive Director of the BKR International Asia Pacific region.
However in the last year SMEs in the Asia Pacific region have reported only 19 percent of malicious attacks on IT security, compared to 50 percent of SMEs in the Americas.
The survey reported that more than 50 percent of SMEs in the Asia Pacific region are confident in their organisation’s ability to identify, respond in a timely manner to, and effectively mitigate the impact of a security breach.
“Companies who have yet to experience a major catastrophe may be taking the ‘it won’t happen to me’ approach; yet to be ‘reactionary’ rather than ‘preventative’ to something so serious, significant and recently prevalent, once the damage is done, may be too late,” Roger added.
The survey, conducted by BKR International and MWR InfoSecurity, researched 200 SMEs across various industries.
