Small enterprises represented 61% of companies affected by credit card hacking in 2013, according to British global payments company WorldPay.

Payment data breaches have cost WorldPay’s customers £870,000 ($1.47m) in the past three years and hit electrical, general and clothing retailers especially hard.

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Dave Hobday, managing director at WorldPay, said that small firms still did not know how to protect themselves from a breach.

Companies that did not take the necessary steps to protect their customers’ data – known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards – could face serious costs, warned WorldPay.

"The cost of a card data breach can be hefty. Our small business customers could pay up to £4,100 just to investigate what happened," added Hobday.

According to WorldPay, simple verifications could be enough to protect small companies, such as changing passwords, keeping a clear list of suppliers and service providers, regularly testing the firewall and securely destroying all unneeded card data files.

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This warning follows a research by London-based accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for the UK government’s Department of Business, which found that a cyber attack on a small company – with less that 50 staff – cost it between £65,000 and £115,000.

An attack on larger firms – with 250 or more employees – cost between £600,000 and £1.15m.

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