Most SMBs surveyed by vendor Untangle report increasing support for new ways of working, including the purchase of new cybersecurity technologies since 2020.
Scott Devens, chief executive at Untangle, said that about eight in ten smaller firms appear to have increased their focus on IT security.
“They have stronger networks than a year ago and have plans for further attack prevention for the future. There’s a definite trend towards putting more IT in the cloud and following a multi-layered security approach,” Devens said.
With a changing workplace landscape, and a continued rise in cyberattacks, fewer SMBs think cyberattacks can’t happen to them, Devens explained.
The small survey of 740 respondents was presented as part of Untangle’s fourth annual SMB IT Security Report, which you can read here.
According to Untangle, respondents indicate a realisation that they too can be targets, and are looking at IT security from a “problem or solution standpoint”.
Most named breaches as their top security concern, citing firewalls and antivirus and anti-malware protection as their top IT security solutions — and many suggested they had increased their IT security budget in 2021.
Half said that most of their staff were back in the office. However, many respondents indicated they had moved at least one in four employees to working some of the time remotely on a more permanent basis — in line with the so-called hybrid working trend.
“Because of this, 20% of SMBs [in the survey] have implemented some type of SD-WAN technology with another 19% having plans to implement or are looking into it,” according to Untangle.
Nearly three in ten SMB respondents blamed their employees, however, for not following guidelines, saying this was their biggest barrier to IT security.
Budget constraints and lack of staff were also major barriers, they said.
Conclusions are partly backed by polling by another security vendor, Ivanti, which highlighted that patching has become more arduous for many IT teams.
US-based Untangle is a network security vendor of firewalling and SD-WAN routing, with centralised management in the cloud for distributed networks.
( Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay )
