About 1 in 5 Small Businesses Affected by Cyber Fraud in 2018, Study Finds

Did you know that more than 55,000 cyber breaches and incidents occurred in 2018? Technology advances are making it harder than ever to defend against online security attacks. Merchant Machine have conducted an analysis to compare which industries are the most likely to fall victim to these attacks.

Here’s what the study found:

• The Healthcare Sector Reported Most Breaches: As an area that stores some of the most sensitive information, the Healthcare sector saw an unnerving 536 security breaches last year. These all meant personal information was at risk.
• The IT Sector has Second Highest Incident Rate: 1,040 incidents were reported last year. Incidents can be a number of things including a website defacement to an impersonation.
• This Country Has The Highest Malicious Email Rate: In Brazil, 35.7% of all emails sent are malicious. Also, 60.8% of emails sent are spam-related.
• More Than 55% of Emails Sent in Each of the World’s Most at Risk Countries are Spam: All of the top 10 countries with the highest rate of a cyber security risk have more than 55% of emails sent with spam-related content inside.

The revealed which businesses are more likely to be at risk across sector and size. The analysis also looks at the risk across ten countries and the number of security breaches and incidents per sector.

How does the size of a business affect security?
Naturally, as a business increases in size, risk also increases, not only regarding technology but various other areas too. Larger businesses are under the most threat, with 29% of companies with more than 50+ employees being affected by fraud. Small businesses with 1-9 employees had the smallest percentage of business affected by fraud at 10%, whilst this nearly doubled for medium-sized businesses (10-49 employees) at 19%.

The sectors at most risk
In a digital world, the threat of cyber attacks isn’t uncommon and with the risk of data breaches, fraud, and reputational damage – businesses are number one targets for cybercriminals.
The research also showed that the public sector had over 22,000 incidents in the last year, which includes website defacement or impersonation. They also had over 300 breaches – meaning that numerous amounts of sensitive information were put at risk.

It comes as no surprise that the IT (Information) sector, had over 1,000 incidents in the past year, but only 109 breaches, one of the lowest amount of breaches overall of the industries studied, just behind the education sector with 101. The property sector had one of the worst figures across both attacks – despite having only 368 incidents in the past year, the sector has almost the same amount of breaches at 338, making it one of the riskiest for putting sensitive information at risk.

Below is an infographic of their findings.