Mid-sized businesses are 490 percent more likely to be breached

Mid-sized organizations are as much as 490 percent or more likely to experience a security breach by the end of 2021 as they were in 2019.

A report from security platform Coro shows that mid-size companies are largely unprotected due to the fact that they lack resources, expensive products and expertise needed to protect against increasing attacks.

"While we've seen broader-reaching protection developed for the large enterprise, the cyber security industry is not prioritizing mid-market needs. Now, growing businesses remain entirely exposed in the face of truly unprecedented levels of cyber attacks, which are rapidly increasing not only in volume and sophistication, but also in range and lethality," says Guy Moskowitz, CEO of Coro. "The market has failed to protect these essential businesses, and Coro is addressing this issue by providing comprehensive, enterprise-grade cyber security protection priced and engineered specifically for mid-size companies."

The research, based on findings from over 4,000 businesses, shows a majority of mid-market organizations are in the dark when it comes to detecting attacks and completely defenseless when it comes to warding them off. Email malware attacks have increased 154 percent between 2020 and 2021, but just one percent of mid-size companies have email malware protection in place in 2021 -- with 88 percent of that number having misconfigured the protection settings.

The numbers are even worse for lesser known attacks such as Wi-Fi phishing, which have increased 203 percent. Again less than one percent of mid-size companies have any kind of Wi-Fi phishing protection in place, and those who do have a misconfiguration rate of 90 percent.

No surprise then that attacks on mid-market organizations in every sector increased by at least 50 percent between 2020 and 2021. Healthcare and transportation stand out as the fastest growing sectors, with attacks increasing over 125 percent between 2020 and 2021. Attacks in retail, manufacturing and professional services nearly doubled, increasing by between 86 percent and 90 percent.

To help businesses protect themselves Coro is unveiling its new Easy Upgrade Program, a first-of-its-kind cyber security financing program. The initiative provides financing options that enable companies currently locked into contracts with legacy security solutions to upgrade to Coro's all-in-one platform immediately with no upfront cost.

You can find out more and get the full report on the Coro site.

Image credit: Den Rise / Shutterstock