Computer Security in Small Businesses - An Example from Slovenia

Abstract

This chapter presents the results of an investigation conducted in Slovenia from November 1999 until January 2000, focusing on some basic computer security problems and use of information technology (IT) and information systems (IS) in 122 small Slovenian businesses. The average number of total employees was 5.7, including the owner of the small business. In some countries, businesses of this size are also called ‘very small businesses.’ According to that, this chapter is dedicated to small business owners/managers or those dealing with small businesses. In the first section I present the main reason for this research and discuss some previous research dealing with small business use of IT and computer security practice. In the following section I define small business and the methodology that I used for data collection and analysis. The results were based on interviews given by the owners or managers of these companies. In the results section the overall purpose of this study is presented. The aim of the research was to assess why some Slovene small businesses do not use IT, how IT and IS are used in small businesses, what kind of security measures are used, how many and what kind of problems they had with computer hardware and software, and how they managed to solve those problems. I compare the results with some similar research in other countries.