The Small Business Cybersecurity Advantage
While it may seem like small businesses have a disadvantage when it comes to cybersecurity, the opposite is actually true. Small businesses are actually much easier to keep secure than big businesses. With a small fraction of the investment, a small business can achieve rock-solid, enterprise-grade security.
In this article, we’ll compare smaller and larger organizations in terms of how they manage security. We’ll look at the advantages of small businesses particularly and get a sense of what is required to achieve a strong defensive security posture. Finally, we’ll take a close look at why most small businesses fail at cybersecurity and how to avoid it.
Cybersecurity Challenges at Large Companies
There are two main factors that drive the high cost of cybersecurity at large companies: size, and constant change.
Big companies have a lot of people and a lot of computers. That means that there’s a lot to secure! But perhaps even more importantly, big companies are constantly changing.
Employees are constantly being hired and let go. New computers, mobile phones, printers, and other assets are added and removed daily. New software is constantly being integrated and old software abandoned.
Internal departments at big companies change all the time, and mergers and acquisitions present events during which the digital assets of two companies need to be combined in the most effective, cheapest way possible.
In fact, the difficulty of securing a network after a merger or acquisition is so high that it’s far cheaper to pay for penetration testing (an ethical hacking service that attempts to identify as many vulnerabilities as possible) than it would be to rebuild the network from scratch and avoid those vulnerabilities altogether.
One of the implications of this constant change is that big companies can’t take it for granted that ‘if the network is secure today, it will be tomorrow’ – because the network will likely be different tomorrow!
The Small Business Advantage
In contrast, small companies have distinct advantages that can help them stay secure:
- Low employee turnover – less accounts constantly added, deleted, and modified.
- A manageable number of assets.
- Relatively small number of changes on any given day.
- A (relatively) low number of employees who need to be trained.
- Hardware doesn’t need to be as powerful to handle the entire network.
- Because there’s less that changes and less to constantly monitor, you don’t need a huge team to manage security.
- A network secured today will be easier to keep secure tomorrow.
The relatively small and static nature of small businesses means that cybersecurity is much easier to manage, and it can cost a lot less.
The Main Disadvantages of Small Businesses
We’ve seen that small businesses have a massive advantage over large ones when it comes to securing digital assets. However there are two main disadvantages that we must also take into account.
First, the impact of a cyber attack can be devastating because small businesses often don’t have the capacity to stay afloat following the attack. An entire business might be wiped out by a single successful phishing attack, for example.
Second, small businesses often don’t invest the money or time required to build even a basic defense.
While most small business owners chalk this up to the high cost associated with cybersecurity, we believe that this is mostly an issue of education and perception.
We believe that small businesses can build a strong defense with little or even no funding, and that’s what Guardian Angel IT is all about!
The caveat is that nothing is truly free. While there are free software options for many common technologies, they do take time to set up, maintain, and use. Open source and/or free software generally offer no, or little, dedicated support. If your small company already has an IT person or a staff member familiar with IT, these free options are a great way to boost security without spending money.
For companies that don’t have someone on staff with IT experience, there are also excellent, low-cost options that allow small companies to gain enterprise-grade security within a tight budget, without having to DIY anything. Our goal at Guardian Angel IT is to provide the highest ROI products and services to help small businesses achieve a super strong defense.
Good Advice for Every Company, Big or Small
One important thing to mention is that the best security infrastructure in the world can’t make up for poor security-related behaviors.
Even without spending a single dollar, most companies can dramatically reduce the risk and impact of a cyberattack by educating employees, configuring software correctly, and keeping it updated.