Over a quarter of businesses don’t use anti-malware protection: reports

Despite increasing cyber security risks, over a quarter of surveyed individuals at Canadian businesses over the past year and a half have not instituted anti-malware protection, while a sizeable chunk said they don’t have a formal policy to fix security vulnerabilities. The results were pulled from two separate reports, one from Statistics Canada and the other from the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) during cyber security awareness month. Both were released on Monday. At its most basic, 37 and 24 per cent of businesses, as reported by CIRA and StatCan respectively, did not have anti-malware protection. Malware, or malicious software, has been a source of great pain for not only businesses but medical institutions, as seen in one of the most heavily-publicized incidents of its potential last year. In 2017, StatCan said 38 per cent of respondents said the motive for the cyber attack was to either steal money for demand a ransom payment. StatCan also identified that 26 per cent didn’t use email security and 32 per cent lacked network security, such as a firewall. What’s more, CIRA found that 71 per cent didn’t have a formal policy to patch security vulnerabilities, “exposing these organizations to massive security holes.” StatCan found that only 13 per cent of businesses had a “written policy in place to manage or report cyber security incidents.” “Most concerning was the fact that 27 per cent of respondents said they lacked the resources to employ a cybersecurity professional, while 23 per cent didn’t employ a resource as they deemed the risk too low,” CIRA said in its report. Similarly, StatCan found that 26 per cent of businesses said they don’t have employees primarily responsible for cybersecurity and that 56 per cent said cybersecurity wasn’t a high enough risk to the business. StatCan’s report noted that a total of $14 billion was spent by Canadian businesses on cybersecurity in 2017 and in that year, over one in five (21 per cent) of those businesses were impacted by cyber incidents. Despite these concerns, CIRA said confidence levels among Canadian businesses when it comes to their preparedness are relatively high, at 78 per cent. In November, Canadian businesses will be required to notify users if their personal information has been the subject of a breach that could pose significant harm to the individuals. But according to CIRA, while 58 per cent are familiar with The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), 38 per cent said they are unfamiliar with that law. CIRA commissioned The Strategic Council to interview 500 individuals, business owners and employees, with responsibility over IT security decisions to come up with the figures. The survey was done over 12 months between August 2017 and August 2018. CIRA spokesman Spencer Callaghan said the organization could not apply a margin of error because it was an online panel. StatCan said it expected to have a sample size of 12,000 with a response rate of 60 per cent. There was a pre-contact period between mid-November and mid-December 2017, with a collection period between January and March 2018.

Over a quarter of businesses don’t use anti-malware protection: reports

Brief | October 15, 2018

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Over a quarter of businesses don’t use anti-malware protection: reports

Brief | October 15, 2018

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