“We don’t have the resources for complex cybersecurity operations.”

“Right now we’re focusing on growing business revenue.”

“As an SMB we’re not likely to be targeted in a cybersecurity attack.”

 All of the above are common excuses small businesses use to justify putting cybersecurity on the backburner. It’s time SMBs recognized them for what they are: Excuses that put your business at risk.

Why isn’t cybersecurity a priority for SMBs?

There are many reasons why SMBs tend to devote fewer resources towards cybersecurity. One is a tendency to prioritize growth and profitability over IT. 

Others include the relative lack of resources, both human and capital, compared to larger enterprises. With fewer security experts on staff, IT teams are often stretched too thin, which can lead to gaps in security. Budget constraints make it difficult to attract top infosec talent — especially now when there’s far too little supply to meet the demand.

So even when SMBs intellectually recognize the importance of cybersecurity, they often lack the internal expertise and capital to build a cybersecurity program comparable to what large enterprises can support.

How devaluing cybersecurity hurts SMBs

Some SMBs even believe (mistakenly) that they are not at risk because of their small size. If threat actors can go after large enterprises with high profit potential, why would they waste resources on the little guy?

In fact, SMBs are at risk for cyber attacks, and that risk is increasing. According to Small Business Trends, 43% of all cyber attacks target small businesses. The same source also shows the average small business spends $879,582 to mitigate damages from a breach — a huge expense that puts 60% of SMBs who experience a cyber attack out of business within six months of an incident.

Making matters worse is the fact that as cyber attacks grow in frequency and intelligence, trends such as mobility, multi-device workforces, wireless access and the cloud are stretching network attack surfaces and increasing the potential number of threat vectors. This makes protecting SMB networks a lot more complex, especially for businesses that use a hodgepodge of point solutions from multiple vendors — 60% according to our technology partner, Fortinet.

In these conditions, it has become critical for small businesses to adopt tools and strategies that enable them to simplify complex IT environments, while providing the agility to scale up security with growth and changing threats.

Connected UTM: A solution for SMBs

To control costs and ease the burden on IT, many forward-looking small businesses have adopted Unified Threat Management (UTM) as an approach to combining advanced security with ease-of-management and affordability. But with cyber criminals constantly upping the ante, smaller businesses need security technology that can keep them ahead .

This requires a UTM solution that can both simplify and optimize security in dynamic threat environments by:

• Extending network security policy to on-premises and off-premises endpoints
• Protecting web-facing applications from compromise and intrusions
• Enabling continuous inspection of seemingly innocuous files to identify, log and communicate intelligence on previously unknown malware

Through our partnership with Fortinet, Resilient offers an affordable, scalable Connected UTM solution that delivers enterprise-level protection while streamlining security management. The recognized Gartner Magic Quadrant leader, Fortinet’s connected UTM offers the broadest set of top-rated, integrated networking and security components from one console.

To learn how your SMB can benefit from a Fortinet Connected UTM solution, contact ResilientIQ. The time for excuses is over.