MORE than half of Australasian small businesses claim to have experienced security breaches, according to results from a Symantec survey released today.
Symantec's 2009 Global Small and Mid-sized Business (SMB) Security and Storage survey in Australia and New Zealand revealed security breaches included instances where information has been subject to unauthorised access, often where the data is lost or hacked.
Steve Martin, SMB director at Symantec said that in contrast, only 29 per cent of companies in the US and 27 per cent of SMBs in Canada experienced breaches.
Symantec 2009 Global SMB Security and Storage Survey drew responses from 1,425 small and medium businesses in 17 countries with 100 responses from Australia (50) and New Zealand (50).
According to Martin, some of the reasons for the differences included the lack of specialised IT staff in some of these companies, limiting the knowledge or skills to keep their security up-to-date.
Furthermore, US companies are governed by data mandatory disclosure law, which is in place in several states across the country, Martin said.
Martin said the law required an organisation to inform their customers of any loss of their personal information.
However in Australia there are no such mandatory disclosures and therefore data protection isn't in the forefront of an SMB's mind.
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