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Most Canadian businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks, but small and medium-sized businesses are particularly vulnerable, a new security study conducted by Cisco shows.

About 60% of Canadian firms do not have a security strategy in place or don’t know how to prepare their networks for new mobile or cloud-based models, it said.

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Canadian firms with fewer than 100 employees accounted for a larger proportion of those without a security strategy (26%), compared to larger organizations with up to 500 employees (11%) or larger staff (16%), the data released Tuesday showed.

“The story in Canada isn’t all too different than elsewhere, but what is different is the proportion of small and mid-sized business is much higher,” said Fred Patterson, Cisco Canada’s channel director of security. “Therefore, while the challenges of small and mid-sized businesses are smaller, the greater exposure might be in Canada because of the make up of our business base.”