Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs), who lack the resources to protect themselves against malware attacks, are increasingly outsourcing their cybersecurity to managed services providers (MSP), according to a survey by Wakefield Research.
In the survey — conducted only in the US, the UK and Australia — 81% of respondents agreed such outsourcing would improve their bandwidth for addressing other tasks and make up for their lack of time and in-house expertise. In fact, according to the study, nearly 60% of respondents think their business is more prone to cyberattacks because they have too few resources for maintaining their defenses.
At the majority of small to medium businesses, IT teams are expected to handle all cybersecurity management and concerns. According to the survey, IT employees at nearly 1 in 3 companies (32%) juggle security along with their other IT responsibilities.
This leaves employees stretched thin and unable to devote the necessary time to many critical cybersecurity tasks. Data breaches at massive companies like Target and J.P. Morgan make dramatic headlines, but there are dozens of threats to smaller enterprises each week that don’t make the news at all.
According to the survey, just 50% of respondents in the US feel they don’t have time to stay abreast of the latest cybersecurity threats, and 45% believe they are unprepared for unsecured internal and external networks, such as public WiFi, and 40% for unsecured endpoints, such as computers and mobile devices.
Even the SMBs willing to outsource look for MSP’s they require them to investment little money in new infrastructure and management costs. Lack of financial resources is the main reason why SMBs try to defend their data themselves.
“This perception must change. A viable alternative to the ‘go at it alone’ standard is an outsourced approach,” says George Anderson, director of product marketing at Webroot, the organization that sponsored the survey.
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