New government study highlights 'digital divide' in business
Posted 22 March 2007 at 9:27AM by Simon Dickson in IT systems and support
A new government study reveals the extent of computer security breaches in UK businesses.
The National Statistics report, Focus On The Digital Age, shows that 52% of UK businesses suffered a malicious or premeditated breach during 2005; that's actually down a bit on the 2003 figure of 68%.
Infections by viruses or spyware remain the most common type of incident, suffered by 35 per cent of all businesses and 43 per cent of large businesses. Most companies admitting to malware problems said they had suffered a few problems over the course of the year... but 4% reckoned they had problems daily.
A fifth of UK businesses had had problems with staff misuse of IT systems; but in larger companies, that rose as high as two-thirds. Similarly, larger firms reported much greater problems with theft and fraud involving computers.
And whilst around 60% of firms claim to have a disaster recovery plan in place, a similar number don't have a formal security policy.
Security concerns aren't putting companies off embracing the internet, though; they continue to put a growing proportion of investment into IT, and smaller businesses are catching up with their larger rivals' huge investments in the 1990s. 70% of businesses said they had a website in 2005, with 31% also having an intranet.
The number of businesses selling online doubled between 2002 and 2005; although again, there's a clear divide between small and large firms. More than half the businesses surveyed said they had also made purchases over the internet.
The report points out a similar 'digital divide' among consumers. Almost half of households in Great Britain had Internet access, a digital TV service and one or more mobile phones in 2006. But one in 12 households (8 per cent) did not have access to any of these.
If you're interested in expanding your business online, or taking to the internet for the first time, there's a huge amount of useful information contained within this report, to help you make the case for doing so. National Statistics publishes this data free of charge; there are easily digestible summaries of each topic, with longer write-ups and dozens of spreadsheets available to download if you want more.
Tags: digital divide, e-commerce, intranets, national statistics, security breach, spyware, viruses
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