What are the five biggest cyber security challenges facing small businesses?

Small to medium-sized businesses don’t always have the time and resources to identify shortcomings in their cyber security.

Thankfully, a thinkpiece from CSOOnline.com has gone to trouble of compiling a list of the five biggest cyber security challenges facing smaller organisations.

Using results from a survey conducted by global IT analysts ESG, it has been claimed that organisations depend on too many manual or informal processes for cyber security - this was found to be the single largest cyber security obstacle for SMEs, cited by 28 per cent of the survey sample.

A similar proportion of respondents (27 per cent) believed the biggest cyber security challenge was centred around the difficulty of managing too many disconnected and complicated cyber security tools. 

An identical percentage said their biggest challenge was caused by business managers not understanding or supporting strong cyber security.

Precisely one in four respondents believed their most sizable cyber security obstacle was linked to their organisation not providing an appropriate level of cyber security training for non-technical employees, leading to increased risk.

Finally, 24 per cent cited their organisation’s lack of skills to deal with modern types of cyber threats as the biggest challenge to effective cyber security.