Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) should be more aware of cyber crime, an industry expert has recommended.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), SMEs are becoming a lot more aware of how to handle phishing emails but other types of cyber crime still remain problematic.

"The impression we get from crime surveys is that there's a wide range of different crimes and different issues that [SMEs] have been victim to," a spokesperson for the FSB said.

She added: "[Our] members are becoming a lot more aware of how to spot these and how to deal with them."

The last FSB survey conducted on the issue revealed that about 20 per cent of businesses have been deterred from making greater use of online trading because of the fear of online crime and card fraud.

On January 17th the FSB launched a 12 month campaign to encourage businesses to report all crime to the police, no matter how minor.

Currently, statistics show that only one in eight incidents are reported although crimes targeted against businesses make up one fifth of all recorded crime.

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