Research Report - Building a culture of cyber safety in Australian small business

Research highlight: Gaps in basic cyber safety skills

Despite 8 in 10 small businesses experiencing a cyber threat in their lives, most small businesses had not implemented four critical safety measures to protect them from online attacks.

• Multi-factor authentication absent in 50% of small business cyber defences: When you turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA), you set a virtual alarm for your small business. Worryingly, there was a significant drop in small businesses enabling MFA for their email accounts, despite email scams leading the type of cyber crimes targeting small businesses.
• Sharing passwords is common practice: About 5 in 10 small businesses still record their passwords in one place, like a shared word document. If a cyber criminal gained access to this, it would be the recipe for disaster.
• Software updates are lagging in half of small businesses: When your software is not up to date, it leaves cracks in the system that cyber criminals can sneak through. According to the research, half of small businesses don’t have automatic software updates turned on.
• Only 1 in 2 small businesses are backing up daily: If a cyber attack hit your business tomorrow, a back up is key to ensure your business can respond and recover. Yet, many don’t have their important business information saved or regularly update it.

Follow the link below to access the full report.



https://cyberwardens.com.au/cyber-safety-small-business-research/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20research%2C%20half,business%20can%20respond%20and%20recover.