skip to main content
research-article
Open access

The Invisible COVID-19 Small Business Risks: Dealing with the Cyber-Security Aftermath

Published: 30 December 2020 Publication History

Abstract

COVID-19 forced small businesses globally to move their presence online to survive. Cyber-criminals have swiftly taken advantage of the chaos wrought by this move. Due to factors ranging from small businesses’ inexperience with technology to a global cyber-security skill shortage, policy-based solutions by governments are needed to help ensure that this vital sector in global economies does not fall victim to cyber-criminals. We propose and discuss three measures that governments can take to build up small business cyber-security resilience.

References

[1]
Robert Ackerman Jr. 2019. The Cyber Skills Shortage Continues to Balloon—And Think Tanks Aren’t Helping. Retrieved from https://www.rsaconference.com/industry-topics/blog/the-cyber-skills-shortage-continues-to-balloon-and-think-tanks-arent-helping.
[2]
Drew Armstrong. 2019. I Lost My Identity to a Fraudster, and It Took Six Years to Clean Up the Mess.Retrieved August 2019 from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-12/i-lost-my-identity-to-a-fraudster-and-it-took-six-years-to-clean-up-the-mess.
[3]
AustCyber. 2019. Australia’s Cyber Security Sector Competitiveness Plan 2019 Update. Retrieved from https://www.austcyber.com/resource/australias-cyber-security-sector-competitiveness-plan-2019.
[4]
Australia Post. 2020. Inside Australian Online Shopping, 2020 eCommerce Industry Report. Retrieved from https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/documents/2020-ecommerce-industry-report.pdf.
[5]
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2019. 8167.0 Selected Characteristics of Australian Business. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/allprimarymainfeatures/C575766838376FA0CA2573E1000E3F2F?opendocument.
[6]
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2020. 8167.0—Characteristics of Australian Business, 2018-19. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/technology-and-innovation/characteristics-australian-business/latest-release.
[7]
Australian Cyber Security Centre and Australian Signals Directorate. 2020. Cyber Security and Australian Small Businesses. Retrieved December 2020 from https://www.cyber. gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-11/ACSC%20Small%20Business%20Survey%20Results.pdf.
[8]
Australian Cyber Security Centre and Australian Signals Directorate. 2020. COVID-19: Protecting Your Small Business. Retrieved from https://www.cyber.gov.au/advice/covid-19-protecting-your-small-business.
[9]
Australian National University. 2019. Incident Report on the Breach of the Australian National University Administrative Systems. Retrieved December 2019 from https://imagedepot.anu.edu.au/scapa/Website/SCAPA190209_Public_report_web_2.pdf.
[10]
Australian Signals Directorate and Australian Cyber Security Centre. 2020. Threat Update: COVID-19 Malicious Cyber Activity. Retrieved from https://www.cyber.gov.au/threats/threat-update-covid-19-malicious-cyber-activity-20-apr-2020.
[11]
Chantal Bacev-Giles and Reeshma Haji. 2017. Online first impressions: Person perception in social media profiles. Comput. Hum. Behav. 75 (Oct. 2017), 50--57.
[12]
BBC News. 2019. Facebook and Instagram Outage: Business Owners Share Frustrations. Retrieved March 2019 from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47568757.
[13]
British Crown. 2019. Business Population Estimates for the UK and Regions 2019. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/254552/13-92-business-population-estimates-2013-stats-release-4.pdf.
[14]
Craig Butt. 2019. Pedestrian Numbers Drop in the CBD as Pandemic Keeps People Home. Retrieved March 2020 from https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/pedestrian-numbers-drop-in-the-cbd-as-pandemic-keeps-people-home-20200317-p54azk.html.
[15]
Lijiao Cheng, Ying Li, Wenli Li, Eric Holm, and Qingguo Zhai. 2013. Understanding the violation of IS security policy in organizations: An integrated model based on social control and deterrence theory. Comput. Secur. B 39, (Nov. 2013), 447--459.
[16]
March Chiappetta. 2020. Uber Eats Demand Soars Due To COVID-19 Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2020/03/25/uber-eats-demand-soars-due-to-covid-19-crisis.
[17]
Euirim Choi. 2020. Thousands of students could be without laptops. Wall Street J. (Aug. 2020). Retrieved on September 16, 2020 from https://www.wsj.com/articles/laptop-shortage-hits-u-s-schools-as-thousands-face-online-learning-without-device-11598434201
[18]
Council of The European Union. 2016. GDPR Legislative Act. Retrieved from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32016R06798from=EN.
[19]
Cybercrime Programme Office of the Council of Europe. 2020. The Global State of Cybercrime Legislation 2013--2020. Retrieved from https://rm.coe.int/3148-1-3-4-cyberleg-global-state-feb2020-v1-public/16809cf9a9.
[20]
Department of Parliamentary Services. 2018. Small Business Sector Contribution to the Australian Economy. Retrieved from https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/6272043/upload_binary/6272043.pdf.
[21]
Luis Ferre-Sadurni. 2020. New York orders schools, bars and restaurants to shut down. New York Times (Mar. 2020).
[22]
Natalie Gallagher. 2020. One of KC’s best craft cocktail bars adapts with bottled drinks and kits during coronavirus quarantine. Kansas City Mag. 2020, Late Edition (Mar. 2020). A.1. Retrieved on March 22, 2020 from https://www.kansascitymag.com/cocktail-hour-during-coronavirus-outbreak/
[23]
Laura He. 2020. Small Businesses Drive China’s Economy: The Coronavirus Outbreak Could Be Fatal for Many. (February 2020) Retrieved February 29, 2020 from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/economy/coronavirus-china-economy-small-businesses/index.html.
[24]
Georgia Hitch. 2020. Big four banks to speed up loans for businesses applying for JobKeeper amid coronavirus crisis, Josh Frydenberg says. ABC News (Apr. 2020). Retrieved on June 18, 2020 from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-23/banks-agree-speed-up-loans-for-businesses-waiting-for-jobkeeper/12176632.
[25]
Markku Ikävalko, Timo Pihkala, and Sascha Kraus. 2010. The role of owner-managers’ psychological ownership in SME strategic behaviour. J. Small Bus. Entrep. 23, 3 (2010), 461--479.
[26]
Internal Revenue Services. 2020. Internal Revenue Service IP Pin Service. Retrieved from https://www.irs.gov/identity-theft-fraud-scams/get-an-identity-protection-pin.
[27]
JP Morgan. 2016. Cash Is King: Flows, Balances, and Buffer Days—Evidence from 600,000 Small Businesses. Retrieved from https://institute.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmc/jpmorgan-chase-and-co/institute/pdf/jpmc-institute-small-business-report.pdf.
[28]
Paul Karp. 2020. Early access to superannuation paused as police freeze $120,000 in allegedly stolen funds. The Guardian (May 2020). Retrieved on June 20, 2020 from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/08/early-access-to-superannuation-paused-as-police-freeze-120000-in-allegedly-stolen-funds.
[29]
Jessica Longbottom. 2020. Coronavirus Forces Businesses to Adapt to Survive the COVID-19 Pandemic. (March 2020) Retrieved on March 22, 2020 from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/how-businesses-adapting-to-survive-covid-19-coronavirus/12068696.
[30]
Adela Luque, Renuka Bhaskar, James Noon, Kevin Rinz, and Victoria Udalova. 2019. Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D): Using Administrative and Census Records Data in Business Statistics. Retrieved from https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2019/CES-WP-19-01.pdf.
[31]
Pat McGrath and Alison McClymont. 2020. Check Your Super Balance. Australians Scammed out of Thousands via the Coronavirus Early Release Scheme. (June 2020) Retrieved on June 20, 2020 from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-01/scammers-stealing-thousands-through-coronavirus-super-scheme/12301010.
[32]
Tom McIlroy. 2020. Super early access frozen amid AFP fraud investigation. Financ. Rev. (May 2020). Retrieved on June 20, 2020 from https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/super-early-access-frozen-amid-afp-fraud-investigation-20200508-p54r1z.
[33]
McKinsey 8 Company. 2020. Survey: Australian Consumer Sentiment During the Coronavirus Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-australian-consumer-sentiment-during-the-coronavirus-crisis.
[34]
McKinsey 8 Company. 2020. Survey: UK Consumer Sentiment During the Coronavirus Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-uk-consumer-sentiment-during-the-coronavirus-crisis.
[35]
McKinsey 8 Company. 2020. Survey: US Consumer Sentiment During the Coronavirus Crisis. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/survey-us-consumer-sentiment-during-the-coronavirus-crisis.
[36]
Alle Mcmahon and James Hall. 2020. Coronavirus Australia: Uniqlo, Sephora Close as Social Distancing Hits Retail Industry. Retrieved from https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/coronavirus-australia-big-name-shops-closing-their-doors-as-social-distancing-hits-retail-industry/news-story/be67da936b12997d19c78ac6d212309a.
[37]
Lori A. Muse, Stanley G. Harris, and Hubert S. Feud. 2003. Has the inverted-U theory of stress and job performance had a fair test? Hum. Perform. 16, 4 (2003), 349--364.
[38]
OECD. 2019. OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Outlook 2019. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/34907e9c-en.
[39]
Kari Paul. 2020. ‘Zoom is Malware’: Why experts worry about the video conferencing platform. The Guardian (Apr. 2020). Retrieved on June 20, 2020 from https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/super-early-access-frozen-amid-afp-fraud-investigation-20200508-p54r1z.
[40]
Rachel Pupazzoni. 2020. Consumer Complaints Jump after Coronavirus Chaos Delayed Deliveries for Toilet Paper Subscription Companies. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-10/toilet-paper-subscription-service-consumer-complaints-rise/12439036.
[41]
Yolanda Redrup. 2020. Beverage maker Lion hit by cyber attack. Financ. Rev. (Jun. 2020). Retrieved on June 20, 2020 from https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/super-early-access-frozen-amid-afp-fraud-investigation-20200508-p54r1z.
[42]
Camron Slessor and Patrick Martin. 2020. MyBudget System Outage Leaves Thousands of Australian Customers in Financial Limbo. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-13/mybudget-system-outage-leaves-customers-in-financial-limbo/12244926.
[43]
Nick Srnicek. 2016. Platform Capitalism. Polity Press, Oxford.
[44]
State Government of Victoria. 2020. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Restrictions Victoria. Retrieved from https://www.vic.gov.au/coronavirus-covid-19-restrictions-victoria.
[45]
Stop. Think. Connect. 2020. Retrieved from https://www.stopthinkconnect.org/.
[46]
Paul Szoldra. 2016. This Is Everything Edward Snowden Revealed in One Year of Unprecedented Top-secret Leaks. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.in/This-is-everything-Edward-Snowden-revealed-in-one-year-of-unprecedented-top-secret-leaks/articleshow/54367926.cms.
[47]
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. 2013. Comprehensive Study on Cybercrime. Retrieved from http://www.unodc.org/documents/organized-crime/UNODC_CCPCJ_EG.4_2013/CYBERCRIME_STUDY_210213.pdf.
[48]
US Census. 2015. 2015 SUSB Annual Datasets by Establishment Industry—Data by Enterprise Employment Size. Retrieved from https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb/datasets/2015/us_state_6digitnaics_2015.txt.
[49]
Rossouw Von Solms and Johan Van Niekerk. 2013. From information security to cyber security. Comput. Secur. 38 (Oct. 2013), 97--102.
[50]
Calvin Wang, Elizabeth Walker, and Janice Redmond. 2007. Explaining the lack of strategic planning in SMEs: The importance of owner motivation. Int. J. Organ. Behav. 12, 1 (2007), 1--16.
[51]
I. M. Y. Woon, G. W. Tan, and R. T. Low. 2005. A protection motivation theory approach to home wireless security. In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS’05). 367--380.
[52]
Work Safe Australia. 2020. Coronavirus COVID-19 Recommended Cleaning: Supplementary Information. Retrieved from https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/cleaning-table-covid19-26May2020.pdf.
[53]
Hanna Ziady. 2020. Our Pandemic Shopping Habits Are Here to Stay. Brands Are Racing to Adapt. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/27/business/consumer-trends-coronavirus/index.html.
[54]
Mark Zita and Staff. 2020. Privacy Confusion over COVID Safe Checklist Rules for Hospitality Venues. Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-14/covid-confusion-as-cafes-warned-about-privacy-dangers/12351314.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Cybersecurity Infrastructure Compliance Key Factors to Detect and Mitigate Malware Attacks in SMEs: A Systematic Literature ReviewSage Open10.1177/2158244025131467115:1Online publication date: 31-Jan-2025
  • (2023)Cyber security and information: a systematic literature reviewInternational Conference on Mathematical and Statistical Physics, Computational Science, Education and Communication (ICMSCE 2023)10.1117/12.3011608(22)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
  • (2022)Six Feet Apart: Online Payments During the COVID-19 PandemicProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35552186:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Digital Government: Research and Practice
Digital Government: Research and Practice  Volume 2, Issue 2
COVID-19 Commentaries and Case Study
April 2021
119 pages
EISSN:2639-0175
DOI:10.1145/3442345
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 30 December 2020
Online AM: 25 November 2020
Accepted: 01 November 2020
Revised: 01 September 2020
Received: 01 July 2020
Published in DGOV Volume 2, Issue 2

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. COVID-19
  2. business risks
  3. cyber-security
  4. governance
  5. policy assistance
  6. small business

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed

Funding Sources

  • Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)285
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)26
Reflects downloads up to 28 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Cybersecurity Infrastructure Compliance Key Factors to Detect and Mitigate Malware Attacks in SMEs: A Systematic Literature ReviewSage Open10.1177/2158244025131467115:1Online publication date: 31-Jan-2025
  • (2023)Cyber security and information: a systematic literature reviewInternational Conference on Mathematical and Statistical Physics, Computational Science, Education and Communication (ICMSCE 2023)10.1117/12.3011608(22)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
  • (2022)Six Feet Apart: Online Payments During the COVID-19 PandemicProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35552186:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
  • (2022)A Survey on the Cyber Security of Small-to-Medium Businesses: Challenges, Research Focus and RecommendationsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.319789910(85701-85719)Online publication date: 2022
  • (2021)Has the covid-19 affected university students with negative emotions and irresponsible Behavior? An Ecuadorian study.Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Education Technology and Computers10.1145/3498765.3498837(456-461)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2021
  • (2021)Navigating the “Glimmer of Hope”: Challenges and Resilience among U.S. Older Adults in Seeking COVID-19 VaccinationCompanion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3462204.3481768(10-13)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2021

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Login options

Full Access

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media