Small- and medium-sized businesses need to pay more attention to cybersecurity, according to experts. (Photo courtesy of Kaspersky) HCM City (VNS/VNA) - Digital transformation is creatingopportunities for small and medium-sized businesses in Vietnam but alsobringing new risks, according to experts.
SMBs account for 98 percent of all enterprises and 40 percent of GDP inVietnam.
In the digital era, information systems play a very important role in theoperation of companies, but holding a large volume of customer informationmakes businesses a target of cybercrime.
Cyberattacks put firms’ money, data and IT equipment at risk.
If a hacker gains access to one firm’s network, they could do a lot of damagewith what they find, such as access to client lists, customer credit cardinformation, the company's banking details, and others.
Cyberthreats are a problem not only for large corporations and governments butalso SMBs.
Research shows that globally 22 percent of small businesses have been thetargets of cyberattacks.
A Kaspersky survey in 2018 on “Growing businesses safely: Cloud adoption vs.security concerns,” found that 74 percent of SMBs were not paying enoughattention to cybersecurity.
The company also surveyed more than 6,000 employees of various companies allover the world, and learnt that regardless of company size data breach costshave risen significantly in the last two years.
Yeo Siang Tiong, Kaspersky’s general manager for Southeast Asia, said:“Cyberattacks could cause significant consequences for businesses. Oncecustomers know that their information was compromised, the involved business’reputation will be tainted, and sometimes this is more damaging than monetaryloss.
“Our report shows that 43 percent of data breaches are caused by employees whoeither maliciously or carelessly give cybercriminals access to their company’snetworks.
“Hence, SMBs should invest more in cybersecurity training for employees toeducate them in the basics of cybersecurity.”
He offered several tips for SMBs to beef up their security defences, includingbasic IT security training for staff, putting a process in place to create andsafely store back-ups, controlling access to corporate data, regularly updatingpatches, and using professional software. — VNS/VNA
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