University of Twente Student Theses
The Impact of Cyber Security on SMEs
Amrin, Nabila (2014) The Impact of Cyber Security on SMEs.
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| Abstract: | Cybercrime in the Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) environment is a growing concern. SME’s dependency on Information Technologies and Internet has opened the door to vulnerabilities to cybercrime. These vulnerabilities are making information security a critical issue for all SMEs. Unfortunately, cybercrime prevention is often neglected within the SME environment. This study aims to be a pilot research for conducting an empirical study by surveying SMEs in Europe on their security practices and position toward current technological trends like Cloud Computing and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). To achieve the aim of the study a questionnaire has been produced. Sixteen SMEs from different business operations, registered in Europe, were interviewed on their recent IT security trends, cybercrime victimization, and cybercrime prevention practices. The main findings indicate that the level of IT security of the respondent SMEs is not to a decent point. The implementation of written security policy is present in the SME environment, but it is not very common. In addition, European SMEs fall behind than Australian organizations in order to implementing IT security measures and policy. BYOD and Cloud Computing are accepted technological trends among respondents. However, the result of the study shows that SMEs are not cognizant of the vulnerabilities related to BYOD and Cloud Computing. 4 out of 16 respondent SMEs reported cybercrime victimization incidents over the period 2013-2014. SMEs are simply unaware of IT-related security incidents, because victimized SME does not spread the news fearing further reputational damage. Referable to the smaller sample size, the results are inconclusive to prove any fact related to cybercrime practices. Further research spanning a longer period of observation must be done in order to obtain responses from more SMEs. The questionnaire developed for this study is tested and it can used as a questionnaire for a larger study. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | Bicore, Enschede, The Netherlands |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 54 computer science |
| Programme: | Computer Science MSc (60300) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/65851 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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