The Symantec Small Business Check-up enables small businesses to benchmark themselves against survey results from 700 small businesses across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
The tool is also aimed at helping small businesses to identify information risk, find out how to protect themselves and pinpoint IT cost savings.
The tool, which provides an analysis of security gaps or inconsistencies that might cause exposure, has already revealed smaller companies share several serious vulnerabilities, Symantec said.
Research using the tool has found that most small businesses are just as susceptible to information risks as large organisations, with 80% having medium to high sensitivity to risk.
More than a third of small businesses have little or no ability to track and audit the way information is created, modified, deleted, accessed and moved.
Some 40% of small businesses have not tested the effectiveness of their back-up and recovery arrangements to make sure they could get their data back in a timely manner following a failure.
"We believe that almost every small business can save significant amounts of money and energy by simply taking a fresh look at the way they approach information protection", said Glenn Woolaghan, senior director for small business, EMEA.
The Small Business Check-up is designed to show them how easy and cost-effective it can be to ensure their information is protected, he said.
This story was first published by Computer Weekly