SK Shield reports South Korean SMEs take average 106 days to respond to cyber attacks

SK Shield released an analysis of cyber incidents affecting South Korean small and medium‑sized enterprises (SMEs) for the period 2021‑2025. The study found that the average time from initial breach to detection and initiation of investigation is 106.1 days, with the longest case taking 700 days.

Ransomware (44.9%) and data theft (42.9%) account for most incidents, followed by cryptocurrency mining. The most common initial entry points are application vulnerabilities (20.8%), file‑upload flaws (18.9%) and VPN weaknesses (15.4%). Manufacturing firms represent 47.4% of the affected cases, with information services and finance also hit.

Over one‑third of incidents required more than 90 days to address, and attacks are concentrated during evening and night hours (18:00‑05:00). SK Shield recommends continuous monitoring and promotes its managed detection and response (MDR) and attack surface management services to help resource‑limited SMEs improve response times.