Hackers are increasingly targeting mid-sized companies, according to a new study released by McAfee. Conducted together with Bloor Research, the report titled "The Security Paradox" surveyed 1,100 companies with between 51 to 1,000 employees around the globe. It found that 40 percent of these mid-sized businesses encountered more data breaches from last year; at a time where they are either slashing or freezing their security budgets.

Nigel Stanley, business technology specialist who heads Bloor's IT Security practice, observed that mid-sized businesses represent "softer" targets. Stanley says, "They don't have the same infrastructure or technology as enterprise organizations to defend themselves." Indeed, a third of these organizations were apparently attacked repeatedly, and many of these incidents required up to five hours of investigation and rectification. Another 16 percent said it took more than a week for them to recover.

Part of the problem could be due to mid-sized businesses maintaining the mistaken impression that hackers prefer to target larger enterprises. In addition, McAfee noted that the amount of time devoted by these companies to security has actually decreased--up to 65 percent of businesses are spending less than three hours per week on security.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at SearchMidmarketSecurity.com
- check out this article at eWeek

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