Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks.

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More than 5,000 Balearic businesses out of over 38,000 registered with social security have suffered some form of cyber attack since 2015. These place the Balearics around halfway among Spanish regions in terms of attacks, according to Pyramide Asesores.

The attacks have been in the form of hacking through emails that contain viruses or through malware that can lead to demands for payment to unlock encrypted files.

The massive cyber attack last Friday by which the program WannaCrypt affected Windows XP  has highlighted the security vulnerability of businesses' systems. Especially vulnerable, points out the president of the Chamber of Commerce, José Luis Roses, are small to medium-sized firms which don't have specialist personnel.

The government's director-general for technology development, Benjami Villoslada, says that systems constantly need to be updated in order to improve security. He explains that a year and a half ago the government replaced more than 80% of XP systems. All remaining ones will now be replaced as a simple precaution.

The government was unaffected by the Friday attack, but updates have been been made in order to prevent any type of mutation from the WannaCrypt virus. The Microsoft patch for XP was available to do this over the weekend.

The Minerva control system for the courts in the Balearics was disconnected on Friday following a decision taken by the national ministry of justice. The system went down at two in the afternoon and was partially restored on Monday. At first there was limited internet connection capacity which was later rectified.

The IB-Salut health service is undertaking a technical audit and risk assessment of all systems before completely reopening the internet service. The servers are being updated; 80% of them have been.