The results came from Symantec's 2009 Global SMB Security and Storage survey, which drew responses from 600 companies out of Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ).

The report noted the low adoption of basic security measures in the region with 56 per cent of SMBs not having an endpoint protection solution and 53 per cent without a desktop backup and recovery solution.

Findings on storage showed that 70 per cent of these SMBs are extremely concerned with backup and recovery of data, followed by disaster recovery planning and strategy (64 per cent), and archiving data and e-mails (56 per cent). Yet 53 per cent of SMBs have not deployed desktop backup and recovery solutions, and 45 per cent perform backup on a weekly or less frequent basis.

These gaps in basic levels of security, despite an awareness of the current internal and external threats among the region's SMBs, are driving an increase in security breaches, with the most common causes being system breakdowns and hardware failure, human error and improper or out-of -date security solutions. Lack of budget (41 per cent) and employee skills (40 per cent) were cited as the main barriers to securing the SMB environment.

The report also indicated that 52 per cent of SMBs has previously suffered a security breach and the risk of suffering a recurring security breach is higher than other regions around the world.