In addition, 39% of respondents said they did not have their data backed up in more than one location, and 35% said they had been denied access to their business because of a disaster, according to the survey of 1,200 US small business owners.
“Our survey demonstrates that very few business owners have taken a necessary precaution of having a professional data security firm perform a current assessment of vulnerabilities on their commercial website or database applications….We believe that small to medium-sized business owners need to review all aspects of their data security and disaster recovery efforts”, said Barry Sloane, president and CEO of Newtek.
The results of the Newtek survey reflect results reached in other surveys of small businesses. According to a survey earlier this year by Acronis, one-third of small businesses had no offsite data backup and disaster recovery strategy in place.
A survey last year by Trend Micro found that data loss is a growing concern for small businesses. According to the survey, 63% of small businesses were most concerned by viruses, 60% by trojans, 59% by data-stealing malware, followed, at 56%, by data leaks.
The Trend Micro survey found that a majority of small businesses surveyed did not have data loss prevention policies in place and did not have data loss prevention training for employees. Small businesses were 23% less likely to have preventative data leak policies in place than large companies, according to Trend Micro.