NEW YORK—As major retailers begin to tighten their cyber-security defenses, fraudsters are stepping up their focus on small businesses.
Half of 675 small businesses surveyed by The National Small Business Association in 2014 reported they were victims of cyber-attacks last year, up from 44% from 2013. Sixty-eight percent of those who said their data was compromised said they had been hacked at least twice.
“Hackers are going local in their efforts to steal credit card information from United States customers,” said Bill Hardekopf, CEO at LowCards.com.
The New York Times reported that Eataly, the operator of more than two-dozen upscale food halls in New York, Chicago, Italy, Japan and elsewhere, disclosed last month that the systems at its store in the Flatiron district of Manhattan had been breached. The hackers unleashed malicious software into its payment processing system that enabled them to potentially steal customer credit card information for several months of this year.
Eataly, the Times explained, said the breach affected only customers of its Flatiron food hall, which has seven Italian restaurants and sells imported Italian chocolate for $46 a pound, as well as other items.
Not only do smaller businesses typically have weaker security defenses than major retailers, they often do not report the cyber-attacks, the Times said, since they are not publicly traded and are bound by fewer disclosure requirements.
A recent investigation by security firm FireEye found instances of criminals who operated on the Internet sending thousands of malicious e-mails to small, lesser-known businesses in the United States — hotels, restaurants, pizza shops, cafes — all in an apparent attempt to get unsuspecting employees at those business to download an intrusive malware program that can compromise the logon credentials for point-of-sale systems, the Times reported.