**2.2 Malware impacts on SMEs**

Every year a survey of the UK Cyber Security Breach Survey 2022 [25] is conducted by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sports (DCMS) in line with the UK National Cyber Strategy, detailing the cost and impact of cyber-attacks on UK businesses. The year 2022 showed that 39% of UK businesses have been a victim of cyber-attacks. The most common attacks were phishing which accounted for 83 and 21% were attack types such as a denial of service, malware, or ransomware attack. Despite having a lower percentage of attacks, businesses cited ransomware as a major threat, with 56% having a policy not to pay the ransom as quoted by this survey. The report gave insight on SMEs and the culture of not believing ransomware will pose a threat to their business, and that it was unlikely to happen, as SMEs assumed that they did not hold anything of value the hackers would be interested in. In the event of a cyber-attack, the SMEs in this survey tended to resort to traditional methods of recovery, such as shutting down systems and re-booting with backed-up data. SMEs also sought advice from external IT providers for assistance in the event of an attack and some had no plans at all. However, SMEs who took cyber-attacks seriously viewed ransomware such as malware as a serious threat and often had a strict plan in place in the event of an attack. The survey particularly raised points such as SMEs not necessarily engaging in industry standards to help protect their business such as Cyber Essentials and how the uptake for this standard was still exceptionally low as they felt they did not meet the criteria. SMEs who felt they did not have the technical understanding was clearly observed in this survey to suggest that the role of external IT companies is particularly important in the supply chain model. This is so SMEs can access the benefits of a larger and more resourced specialist. The survey also highlighted the importance of how the supply chain poses a threat as an entry point for attackers and the business can only be as strong as the weakest link of the supply chain. The survey indicated that fewer than one in ten organizations actively monitor the risks within their supply chain and so this presents a clear risk for the future. This DCMS survey is particularly important as it is a window into the activities year on year on how trends of cyber-attacks affect businesses in the UK and how our behavioral patterns have a consequence towards risk and its management of it.

A study conducted by Tirumala et al. [26], explored that ransomware (malware) attacks have forced businesses to think about the security of their resources due to SMEs not having the right cyber defense mechanisms in place. This research explores implementing a "Raspberry Pi" based intelligent cyber defense system (iCDS) for SME networks and Smart-homes and how these devices are used to filter malicious contents from incoming traffic and be able to detect malware using AI. The paper concluded that the "Rasberry Pi" device is feasible to use to develop a low-cost iCDS as an alternative to the traditional rule based IDSs in use. Tirumala's study reinforces the study of Rawindaran et al. [5] on the uses of open-source IDS versus commercial IDS, and the challenges faced when introducing ML and AI technologies versus traditional
