Employees at small and medium-sized Canadian organizations have been given a \u201cC\u201d rating for their knowledge of cyber safety and awareness.<\/p>\n
The rating comes from the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which, after surveying 1,525 workers at companies with fewer than 500 employees, concluded firms have been slow to adapt to increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyber attacks.<\/p>\n
Among what the bureau called \u201cstartling\u201d findings:<\/p>\n
Just under three-quarters of respondents (72 per cent) said they have done something that could allow a cybercriminal to gain access to their company\u2019s computer systems. For example:<\/p>\n
The survey results, called a Cyber Savvy Report Card<\/a>, were released in advance of October\u2019s cybersecurity awareness month.<\/p>\n To help raise awareness, the bureau launched cybersavvycanada.ca<\/a>, to help small business owners and their employees better understand the threat of cyber attacks and what they can do to reduce their risk.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone has a role to play in reducing cyber threats in the workplace,\u201d said Celyeste Power, the insurance bureau\u2019s executive vice-president for strategic initiatives and advocacy. \u201cWhile cyber insurance is an important backstop for businesses in the event of a cyber breach, it should be thought of as one component within a complete cyber risk mitigation strategy aimed at reducing an organization\u2019s vulnerability to online threats.\u201d<\/p>\n Employees may also underestimate the role they play in their organization\u2019s cyber defences, the bureau said. It notes that 30 per cent of respondents said they don\u2019t believe cybercriminals would target them at work, while 28 per cent of respondents said their employer is solely responsible for protecting their workplace from cyber threats.<\/p>\n Twenty-one per cent of respondents believe that most cyber breaches are minor and easy to resolve. \u201cThe reality,\u201d the bureau said in a news release accompanying the results, \u201cis that they can have a devastating financial impact.\u201d Citing IBM\u2019s latest annual cost of a data breach report<\/a>, the bureau notes that in 2021, the average total cost of a data breach to Canadian organizations was an estimated $7.3 million.<\/p>\n The insurance bureau has a stake in the cybersecurity of customers with cyber insurance. As a result of rising claims and payouts, insurers have been raising premiums, restricting coverage, and demanding customers toughen their cyber defences, according to a global survey released last month.<\/a><\/p>\n The post Canadian SMBs, employees criticized for poor cybersecurity practices<\/a> first appeared on IT World Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A survey by the Insurance Bureau of Canada suggests only half of firms use multifactor authentication. 19 per cent of respondents said they download unapproved apps on wo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,369],"tags":[486,391,660,396,393,275],"class_list":["post-28858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-smb","tag-cyber-insurance","tag-di","tag-insurance","tag-postmedia","tag-security-strategies","tag-top-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28858"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28907,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28858\/revisions\/28907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewsday.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}