Small and Mid-Sized Businesses Face Greater Cyber Risk

Small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) find themselves between the proverbial rock and a hard place when it comes to cybersecurity. On the one hand, cybercriminals are turning their attention to smaller firms as larger, higher-value corporate targets have improved their cyber defenses. On the other hand, many SMBs are under pressure to rein in technology spending, leading to cuts or limits to their cybersecurity budgets.

Mounting Threats to SMB Resources

The net result is a dramatic increase in cyber risk for companies at the smaller end of the spectrum. The mounting threats to SMBs come with serious financial implications. Yet, some small business owners mistakenly believe they can fly under the radar.

Meanwhile, SMBs have increased their adoption of cloud-based solutions for capabilities like email and collaboration, which can deliver significant cost and efficiency benefits and provide some built-in security. But the massive uptake of cloud software also offers efficiencies for cyber adversaries as well, as they can focus their exploits on more centralized infrastructure and common vulnerabilities of widely adopted email services, for example.

Cybersecurity has become more and more complex for all organizations, but it's smaller and medium-sized businesses that are, especially in today's economic environment, under pressure from a resource perspective. However, there are some new integrated security options that can help small and mid-sized business leaders better secure their environments.

SMB Spending: More Cloud, Less Cybersecurity

As large businesses continue to invest in their cybersecurity and enhance their cybersecurity posture, cybercriminals are pivoting. They're evolving and targeting the softer targets, which are the small and medium-sized businesses.

Remote working has prompted many smaller businesses to adopt cloud solutions for the first time. That's made it more cost efficient for cybercriminals to go after these smaller organizations. They can exploit vulnerabilities in cloud applications or attack the cloud providers themselves.

But even as SMBs have increased their investment in cloud solutions, some have pulled back on cybersecurity investments. It's not surprising, then, that smaller companies lagged their counterparts in larger enterprises in putting adequate defensive technologies like advanced email security in place.

Complex Problems, Integrated Solutions

Human risk management is a complex challenge for any organization, no matter the size. The threat is multifaceted, as companies must contend with a range of threats including phishing, ransomware, credential harvesting, insider threats, and more. Effective protections, likewise, must be layered. That can be a particular challenge for smaller firms that lack the cyber resources and expertise of their larger counterparts.

Since 90% of cyberattacks start with email, email security is a good place to start. But there's a new reality facing SMBs that in the past may have hosted their email on-premises and invested in a secure email gateway. Now that they've implemented a cloud email solution, there may be less clarity about how best to secure it (or whether the security built into the solution is enough).

One investment that can help SMBs, in particular, are email security solutions designed to integrate nearly instantly into a company's cloud email environment. These offerings can provide the same robust security stack built into on-premises email gateways - but designed for the cloud. These email security solutions are ideal for SMBs looking to bolster the security capabilities built into their existing email products without adding resources or complexity. They can offer out-of-the-box capabilities like pre-configured settings, one-click remediation, and user-friendly threat dashboards.

The Bottom Line

Cybercriminals are increasing their focus on SMBs as the adoption of common cloud solutions for email and collaboration tools offer them an easy way in. Offerings like Mimecast's Integrated Cloud Email Security solutions, which currently secures the Microsoft 365 environment, can empower SMBs to address their specific security challenges such as increasingly sophisticated email-borne attacks, an expanded cloud attack surface, and limited resources.

**This blog was originally published on May 25, 2023.