However, on average, across industries, far fewer employees of SMEs have access to PCs.

Clifford Katz, MD of ISA Security, typifies such companies as being in the financial or legal, IT or accounting industries. A total of 100 computing systems will be connected to the Internet. The IT budget is roughly 10 percent of profit (R1 million a year). The security budget would comprise 10 percent of the IT budget (R100 000), and is broken up into technology components (50 percent of the security budget or R50 000), people (25 percent or R25 000) and processes (another 25 percent).

"Technology needs consist of a firewall, which can make up 40 percent of the technology budget, or R20 000 a year," says Katz. "Anti-virus can be about 20 percent of the tech budget, or R10 000 a year, content may be another 20 percent, and authentication another 20 percent.