Over half of Vietnamese businesses suffered a cyber attack in the past year
Over half of Vietnamese businesses suffered a cyber attack in the past year.
As businesses digitalise their operations in response to COVID-19, cyberattacks are on the rise too. Over half of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) in Việt Nam have been victims of cyberattacks in the past year, according to a study by Cisco Secure.
According to its study, 59 per cent SMBs in Việt Nam suffered a cyber attack in the past year, of which 86 per cent lost customer information to malicious hackers.
The study is based on an independent survey of over 3,700 business and IT leaders across 14 markets in the Asia-Pacific, including 152 in Việt Nam. The survey highlighted the multitudes of ways in which attackers can try to infiltrate online systems.
Thirty-nine per cent of affected SMBs in Việt Nam have said that the biggest reason these attacks are successful is that current cybersecurity solutions are not adequate. Thirty-two per cent said they have no cybersecurity solutions in place.
Lương Thị Lệ Thủy, Managing Director of Cisco Vietnam, said that SMBs in the country have increased their pace of digitisation over the past 18 months. This has been driven by the need to leverage technology to continue to operate during the pandemic.
This digitisation has created a critical need for SMBs to invest in capabilities that safeguard themselves against cyberattacks. The more digital they become, the more attractive a target they are for malicious actors, she said.
Besides the loss of customer data, SMBs in Việt Nam that suffered a cyber incident also lost employee data (67 per cent), internal emails (61 per cent), financial information (58 per cent), intellectual property (56 per cent), and sensitive business information (51per cent). In addition, 61 per cent admitted that cyberattacks have hurt their reputation.
Disruptions caused by cyber incidents can have serious implications for SMBs. Downtime of less than one hour usually has a severe impact on revenue, while downtime of more than a day can result in permanent closure.
“We are living in a world where customers seek instant gratification. They no longer have the patience for lengthy downtimes. SMBs must be able to detect, investigate, and block or remediate any cyber incident in the shortest time possible,” said Juan Huat Koo, Director Cybersecurity, Cisco ASEAN.
Refer to:
Vietnam news
