Despite the increased awareness around cybersecurity, many small businesses still make several fundamental mistakes that expose them to greater risk than larger organizations.
Mistake 1: Small businesses believe they are too small to be a target
Most modern cyber attacks are carried out using automated means. Cyber criminals search the internet to locate exposed services and systems that are not up to date with required patches. If they find an exposed service or an unpatched service that can be exploited they will attack it. Many small businesses are currently processing credit card payments, storing customer information and providing large organizations access to them. Therefore, a cyber criminal would consider them to be a viable target regardless of their size.
In reality: Cyber criminals want to make their attacks easy and scalable, not based on a company profile.
Mistake 2: Poor Cyber Hygiene Related to Patch Management and Credential Protection
The two leading technical causes of breaches for small businesses are unpatched vulnerabilities and compromised credentials. Many small businesses wait too long to update their software or rely on the same password across multiple accounts, resulting in a "double hit" where they are vulnerable to both exploit attacks from unpatched software as well as credential stuffing attacks from compromised credentials.
Mistake 3: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is not Fully Used
Increasingly Small and Medium Sized enterprises (SMEs) that have adopted MFA report that implementing it appropriately for their email, online services, admin accounts and remote access greatly lowers the potential for their accounts being compromised by a cyber-attack. Yet, most SMEs use MFA or only on a portion of their users and/or accounts.
Subtlety here – MFA works very well, but it will not always work, the highest level of protection against cyber threats is provided when businesses use phishing resistant methods of MFA.
Mistake 4: Treating Security Awareness Training as a Single Event
The vast majority of breaches are caused by people, whether that's clicking on a phishing email, misconfiguring something, or mishandling sensitive data. The research and industry practice show that conducting Security Awareness Training once a year is of minimal value. As hackers become more sophisticated, using personalised approaches to phishing attacks (AI, etc) it is imperative that institutions conduct regular training on Cyber security threats and provide their staff with simulation exercises in addition to real-world examples of recent successful phishing attacks.
What works better: short regular training with recommended phishing simulations and examples of true to life cases.
Mistake 5: Inadequate Third-party and Vendor Security
Third-party and/or vendor solutions are growing in popularity amongst SMEs increasing reliance on multiple software and hardware solutions provided by SaaS vendors and/or Managed Service Providers (MSPs); not all SMEs exhibit adequate third-party/vendor security, however, many do not have the resources to conduct regular reviews, monitor access or validate security post onboarding protocols for the vast volume of third-party/vendor access they maintain.
Common security gap: Too much or too prolonged access by third-parties/vendors without regular review.
Best Practice: Small businesses should thoroughly test their backup systems and recovery procedures on a regular basis.
Result: Unauthorized individuals have access to sensitive information and are able to become more adept at exploiting that information.
To sum it up, cyber threats in 2026 are faster, more automated, and increasingly offered “as a service,” yet most successful attacks still exploit familiar weaknesses: poor security fundamentals, inconsistent controls, and lack of preparation.
For small businesses, the highest-ROI actions remain unchanged - patch systems regularly, enforce MFA for all users, provide continuous training, manage vendor risk proactively, and test incident recovery plans.
Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT concern; it is a core component of business resilience and operational continuity.