Small Businesses: Cybercrime

(asked on 22nd July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 12 July 2021 to Question 28185, for what reason the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021 did not publish data on micro and small businesses for questions relating to the Cyber Essentials Scheme as it had in previous years.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 9th September 2021

When we published the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2021 we purposely focused on the impact of additional guidance issued by NCSC in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: guidance on home working and video conferencing services; and guidance on moving business online, as we considered these to be the priority topics of interest at that time. As a result, we did not publish the data on awareness of Cyber Essentials for micro and small businesses.

Overall for businesses in 2021, 14% of businesses were aware of Cyber Essentials, in line with 2020 (13%). The figures on micro and small businesses from the 2021 Survey followed the same trend as previous years. As in previous years, awareness of Cyber Essentials was lower for micro (12%) and small (22%) businesses than medium (45%) and large businesses (50%).

Reticulating Splines