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Panda Security: second International Barometer of Security in SMBs
September 2010 by Panda
For the second consecutive year, Panda Security has published its annual International Barometer of Security in SMBs. Almost 10,500 companies, each with up to 1000 computers, took part in the survey, across Europe, Latin America, the United States and Canada. Compared with last year’s figures, French SMBs have improved notably in terms of implementing security measures, and now lead the way (94% of companies have a security system installed). However, they have still suffered from a high percentage of infections (53% compared to 49% and 34%, respectively for their European and North American counterparts).
Awareness about the need for protection is very high across all geographic areas, although an average of 7% of users still believe it is unimportant. In France, only 6% of companies say they have no security system installed, way below the average for other regions (11 to 13%). Globally, 17% of companies use free security solutions to protect themselves (the figure for France is just 2%).
Even though in France a higher percentage of companies are protected, the amount of these who have suffered infections over the last year is still rather high (53% in France, 52% in the rest of the world).
Email continues to be the main entry point for malware along with the Internet. This year, however, there has been significant growth in the amount of infections caused through USB devices, with on average 27% of companies affected through this channel, while P2P, messaging and other similar applications are on the decline as a source of infection.
Loss of time and productivity, as well as interference with computers, are the main consequences of infections, followed by the loss of information.
Overall, companies claim to have maintained a similar investment in security as last year, although when asked if they had anyone dedicated to security management, 72% in France said they did, as opposed to 67% in the rest of Europe, 68% in Latin America and 60% in USA and Canada. All these figures are fractionally up on last year.
You can download the second annual International Barometer of Security in SMBs from: http://blog.pandasecurity.fr/doc/Barometre_Panda_Securite_PME_2010.pdf
