Eighty percent of surveyed small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) rank IT security as a top business priority, with 29 percent spending less than $1,000 on IT security annually, according to a new Untangle 2019 "SMB IT Security Report". 

Untangle surveyed more than 300 SMBs globally to learn more about the state of IT security at these organizations. Data on IT trends that include budget and resource constraints, breaches, IT infrastructure, cloud adoption, and the general state of IT were compiled.  "The lack of a dedicated IT security workforce is also apparent with 52 percent citing they do not have an in-house IT security professional on staff and therefore distribute the responsibility across other roles," says the report. 

Additional key findings include:

  • 40 percent of small and midsize businesses operate in at least five physical locations, including remote access workers.
  • 51 percent of businesses have up to 100 devices connected to their network, including desktops, tablets, mobile devices, printers, etc.
  • 56 percent of those surveyed admit that recent security breaches affect their security roadmap moving forward.
  • 48 percent of those surveyed list budget constraints as the main barrier faced when it comes to IT security, followed by limited time to research and understand new threats (36 percent) and employees who do not follow IT security guidelines (32 percent).
  • When it comes to purchasing IT security solutions, small and midsize businesses rank firewall/network security, antivirus/anti-malware, and identity access management as the most important features to their organization.
  • Most SMBs (74 percent) have at least part of their IT infrastructure deployed on the cloud.
  • 63 percent of survey respondents state their organizations does not deploy a firewall in the public cloud.
  • 20 percent of SMBs are looking into SD-WAN solutions for their organization.
  • 61 percent of SMBs believe that branch office management and protecting against cybersecurity attacks are their biggest incentives for deploying SD-WAN solutions for their organization.