Sixty-one percent of SMBs have been hit by a successful cyberattack in the last year, according to new findings from BlackFog. The research study, which examined the business impact of cybersecurity for organisations in the US and UK, also revealed the growing importance of engaging with trusted partners to meet their security challenges.
Businesses are also falling victim to repeat attacks, with 87% of IT decision-makers stating they had experienced two or more successful attacks in the past 12 months. On average organisations saw close to five successful data breaches, malware or ransomware attacks affecting their network.
Critically for SMBs, the main impact of an attack was business downtime, which affected 58% of respondents. The successful attacks also negatively impacted customer trust and retention with a third of all respondents reporting that the incidents resulted in the loss of customers. Worryingly, 39% of organisations affected also reported a loss of customer data.