According to Panda Security report on the status of security in SMBs world wide, 58% of SMBs world wide were affected due to lack of security, with Brazil being highly infected with 86% and Germany being least with 8%.
The infection ratio at U.S. companies is 46% currently, showing a slight increase from the last year figure of 44 percent in 2009. But it has dropped in Europe from 58 percent in 2009 to 49 percent in 2010. In addition to this, 32% of U.S. SMBs named Internet and USBs/external memory devices as the top methods for computer infections, 21% opted for E-mail and 14% said that it is through downloads. On being asked about infecting agents, 45% of US SMBs said that they face threat from viruses, whereas, 23% cited spyware. Viruses were also found to be popular threats all over the world, as they were voted by 55% of the respondents.
10% of US SMBs were affected to the extent of having to stop their production, while the worldwide average is 30%.
Although this is an alarming situation, security budgets of SMBs remain the same as last year. On asking, if they had anyone dedicated for security management, only 63 percent of companies in the U.S. confirmed it, while 13% of U.S. SMBs are without security systems at all. 57% of this group, without security systems, reported the reason for lacking security, as, they viewed it not important or necessary. Of the companies not having protection, 36 percent of U.S. SMBs were found to be using free solutions, designed for home users. 97% said they have installed an anti-virus solution on their computers, of them 12 percent admitted these systems were out of date. Apart from the above data, it was found that, anti-virus and firewall products are the most widely used security solutions, while anti-spam solutions are not implemented extensively.