Almost seventeen percent of Belgian SMEs are confident in their own cybersecurity strategy. Nevertheless, many people are aware of the seriousness of the current cyber threat.

38 percent of Belgian SMEs rate the current level of digital threat as extremely or very serious. However, only seventeen percent are confident in their own cyber defense measures. This is the result of a survey commissioned by Harfanglab among 750 respondents, one hundred of whom are from Belgium.

Belgians rate the threat situation somewhat higher than their colleagues from Germany or the Netherlands. Phishing, in which an employee clicks on a fraudulent link or file, is seen as the greatest risk by 55 percent. In addition, according to the survey, Belgian SMEs fear hacker attacks on critical infrastructure (52 percent) and vulnerabilities in the supply chain (50 percent).

Gap between consciousness and reality

The gap between awareness of threats and key attack vectors on the one hand and confidence in one’s own measures on the other is large. Only 28 percent say they have excellent incident prevention skills and just under 24 percent say they have excellent incident detection skills. 86 percent of Belgian respondents have drawn up a cyber incident response plan, but barely 20 percent actually trust this plan.

In other words, SMEs know what can go wrong and take action, but they clearly lack confidence. Research does not provide any clues as to causes. In general, we can conclude that many cybersecurity tools today are complex, but were once designed for larger companies. Coupled with a shortage of skilled workers and usually a lack of immense budgets to spend outside of the core business, the reluctance of SMEs is therefore not so surprising.