£800: How much SMEs will lose to cybercrime

Paper thin cost of online attacks

Published: 20 February 2009 16:28 GMT by Nick Heath

Tags: cyber crime, fsb

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Cybercrime remains a relatively minor threat for small businesses - accounting for a fraction of the thousands of pounds that crime as a whole costs SMEs each year.

A survey published by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) this week shows the average annual cost of online crime to small business is estimated to be up to £800.

A spokeswoman for the FSB said: "It is quite a small figure but £800 can be quite a lot for the smallest businesses, which are the most likely to fall victim to this sort of crime.

"It is comparable to something like the annual stationery costs of a small business."

General crime, however, costs FSB members £13,354 annually - with vandalism remaining the most common type of offence against them.

Just over half (54 per cent) of small businesses surveyed by the FSB reported being a victim of an online crime in the last 12 months, with just over a third of victims having been caught out by phishing emails, 15 per cent falling victim to card-not-present fraud and another 15 per cent having to put right IT problems caused by viruses and hackers.

The figures contrast with crime targeted at large enterprises, 65 per cent of which have seen an increase in cybercrime attacks, with a quarter having suffered a DDoS attack or had their corporate systems infected by malware.

More than half of the small businesses questioned by the FSB wanted clearer information about how to report e-crime and 44 per cent wanted a named contact in their local police force.

"A lot of members do not report it because they have a lack of faith in the system's ability to handle their reports of cybercrime," the FSB spokeswoman said.

The FSB wants the Police Central E-crime Unit, the National Fraud Strategic Authority and National Fraud Reporting Centre to work in unison to provide a central way of reporting e-crime to specialist officers and prosecutors who bring cases to court.