Why SMBs are facing significant security, business risks

In this Help Net Security video, Alex Cox, Director of Threat Intelligence at LastPass, discusses how human factors are getting in the way while SMB leaders report investing more time, attention, and budget in cybersecurity. According to LastPass, these factors and policy and technology gaps are harming SMBs and could ultimately lead to financial losses.

Key findings from the survey include:

Leaders perceive low risks. Even though cyber attacks targeting SMBs have increased significantly in recent years, only three in 10 leaders believe their company faces a very high risk (8+ out of 10) of cybersecurity issues.

Executives and IT leaders are overly optimistic. Executives (92%) and IT leaders (93%) believe employees “understand the security expectations” for their jobs, while non-IT leaders are decidedly less confident that employees understand (only 78%).

Policies are still being broken. Roughly one in five business leaders admit to circumventing security policies, as do one in 10 IT security leaders. Younger workers (one in four) are more likely to break policies – and Gen Z professionals are twice as likely as other generations to physically write down passwords (36% v 16%).

Budgets are increasing. 90% of IT leaders and 80% of non-IT leaders say their organizations have increased attention paid to cybersecurity in the past year, including increased cybersecurity budgets.