Almost half of small companies believe they are too small to be affected by cybercrime and fail to take the issue seriously enough, research by internet security firm McAfee suggests.

A staggering 47% of IT decision-makers from across Europe said they thought cybercrime was an issue for larger organisations and 45% though they would not be victims because they were not well enough known.

Over half (58%) of those polled said they did not think they were a valuable target while 56% suggested criminals would be unable to make any money out of their firm.

As a result of this flippancy, 28% of small companies spend just one hour a week implementing IT security measures despite almost one in five (19%) admitting that an attack could put them out of business.

“Cyber-criminals don‘t discriminate; to them size doesn‘t matter,” said Greg Day, senior security analyst at McAfee. “Every SMB, even very small ones, will have customer details or financial information that will be of use to a cyber criminal.”

McAfee is warning companies that they can be victims of viruses, hacking, spyware, spam and even ransomware just as easily as larger companies, which can result in stolen date, computer downtime, decreased productivity, lack of compliance and loss of sales and reputation.

“Choosing a managed solution and outsourcing security helps SMBs free up their time to focus on other priorities, confident in the knowledge that their IT security needs are covered by an expert,” added Day. “It can also mean security technologies that are otherwise out of their price range are available to them.”