The survey, which polled 3000 C-suite executives and managers at SMEs across 15 countries in EMEA, the Americas and Asia-Pacific, revealed that in 2015 SMEs’ concern over cybercrime has doubled to eight percent from four percent in 2013. SMEs in Malaysia (which ranked the risk as fifth), Turkey (ranked sixth) and the U.S. (ranked sixth), are most worried about cyber-attacks.
From a list of nine potential threats resulting from cybercrime, SMEs globally rate theft of customer data as the most critical risk of cybercrime (28 percent), while damage to reputation following a cyber-attack ranked second (16 percent).
One in six (17 percent) SMEs still consider themselves to be too insignificant to attract the attention of cyber criminals. Zurich does not share this view since hackers are not only looking at the size of the potential gain, but also at the ease of committing the crime.
Lori Bailey, Global Head of Special Lines at Zurich commented: “The results of this year’s SME survey, as well as the Advisen Cyber Survey findings reveal that demand for cyber insurance is growing significantly around the globe. However, there is still a misconception among some SMEs that they will not be affected by this pervasive issue. We at Zurich are continuing to invest in identifying risks and delivering solutions to meet the expectations of our customers, irrespective of the size of their business.”
SMEs in many parts of the world see new sales channels (e.g., online trading) as one of the key opportunities for growth (top two in Austria, top three in the U.S. and Turkey, top four in Portugal and UAE, top five in Brazil and Hong Kong), but surprisingly they are not worried about technological vulnerabilities and cybercrime.
Other findings of the survey are as follows:
Zurich recently published the results of its fifth annual Advisen Cyber Survey of U.S.-based risk managers, which revealed a growing interest in increased limits and security breach response plans and showed that greater attention is being paid to emerging risks from new technologies.
According to the survey’s results, the overall upward trend of organizations purchasing cyber liability insurance has accelerated in 2015, up nine percentage points over 2014. Since the first survey in 2011, there has been a 26 percentage point increase in the number of business respondents with cyber liability coverage.
Further information
Zurich’s third annual SME survey was carried out by the research company GfK. The leaders of 3,000 small and medium sized enterprises (0 to 250 full-time employees) around the world were asked to identify up to three risks faced by their business in 2015, and up to three opportunities to grow. A representative sample of 200 CEO/owners, general managers, CFO/treasurers and COO/head of operations from each of the following 15 countries were included: Austria, Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and the U.S.
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