Mid-sized businesses across the US and Canada are struggling to implement basic cybersecurity measures, a new survey has found.
While 49% of mid-sized businesses have plans to budget more for cybersecurity in 2023, 61% said they do not have dedicated cybersecurity experts in their organization and 47% do not currently have an incident response plan.
Additionally, 24% of mid-sized businesses revealed that they have suffered a cyberattack or are unsure if they have suffered one.
The survey, which targeted private sector businesses with between 250 and 2,000 employees across all industry sectors, was commissioned by cybersecurity solutions provider Huntress to highlight challenges faced by mid-sized organisations across core functions, including gaps in toolkits, planning, staffing, security awareness training, and difficulty in securing cyber insurance.
According to the report, mid-sized businesses are struggling to implement basic training measures and recruit the necessary staff, with a large portion of respondents revealing that they have not deployed threat monitoring, endpoint detection and response, vulnerability scanning, patch management, or network detection and response.
In fact, only 9% of workers adhere to security best practices, the Huntress report noted, creating major obstacles when fighting off cyberattacks in today’s advanced threat landscape.
The report also emphasized that mid-sized businesses need to focus on cybersecurity fundamentals to reduce their risk and improve their chances of securing cyber insurance. Findings showed that while 69% of respondents reported they are required to carry some form of cyber insurance, nearly 30% said they have no cyber insurance coverage.
“In some regards, this research tells a virtual ‘Tale of Two Cities’ for mid-size and smaller businesses,” said Kyle Hanslovan, chief executive officer of Huntress. “Many report solid progress in strengthening their cyber defences, while others acknowledge they face significant gaps in resources and talent that substantially increases their cyber risk,” commented Kyle Hanslovan, chief executive officer of Huntress. “That’s why we focus on delivering solutions that scale to their specific size and circumstance to close these vulnerability gaps.”
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