According to a survey from the Institute of Directors, of nearly 1,000 members one quarter said they had experienced a cyber-attack in the last twelve months.
However, of those 250 directors, only 28% reported the attack to the police. That was in spite of half the attacks resulting in interruption to business.
The IoD said the total number of attacks on businesses could be much higher, as directors may not be aware of any attacks or might not define other cyber incidents or data losses as attacks.
It noted many police forces have dedicated cyber-crime units.
According to the research, just 43% of the 1,000 businesses polled know where their data was physically stored.
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