As the company that pioneered easy, affordable, and strong security protection for consumers, we know a few things about security. This month, we had the chance to show how we are bringing this expertise to a market we believe is underserved when it comes to security—small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs).

Consumers and enterprises have plenty of options in security solutions, but the choices for SMBs are limited. Consumer products don’t really fit the needs of a small business, and enterprise products are either too complex or far too expensive. Furthermore, SMBs often lack the resources or skill set to install a good security defense. Adding to these challenges, attacks have risen over the past year that specifically target and prey upon SMBs. Security can seem complex, but we believe that for SMBs, security needs to be easy to use and easy for the channel to service these businesses.

With the release of our new Avast Business endpoint protection solutions, we are providing the strongest business-grade protection to date. We have also added device, data, and identity protection features that make it much easier for a business or reseller to choose the right security solution.

To ensure we are headed in the right direction to respond to these SMB security needs, we turned to our SMB customers for feedback on their security challenges and concerns. Here’s what we found:

• 90% of SMBs believe that IT security will become increasingly important for their business over the next five years.
• 75% of SMBs are more concerned about security than they were one year ago.
• On the topic of IT resources:
• Over 33% of SMBs lack a proper system for ensuring software updates are made immediately.
• 10% of SMBs either do not have the resources to update software and applications to prevent security threats, or they ask their employees to do this manually.
• Only 17% of SMBs take actions to change or enforce new passwords among their employees.
• 40% of SMBs do not have a process in place to revoke or change all passwords that an employee has used when that employee leaves.
• 60% of SMBs do not automatically force regular password changes on key systems.
• 33% of SMBs don’t have any security projects planned in the near future to continue improving their security infrastructure.

We encourage you to visit our new Avast Business website and check out
these new products or sign up for a 30-day trial.  Look for updates and
news on our website, Twitter, and LinkedIn.