“We’re too small to be a target.” 

Sound familiar? 

That’s the phrase that perpetuates the 46% of cybersecurity breaches that occur in businesses with <1,000 employees. 

Attacks against small businesses have accelerated by 300% since last measured in 2022, making a cyber risk management plan for small businesses more important than ever before. 

Read on to learn the exact tips your small business needs to know to remain risk-resilient and proactive in its cybersecurity posture. 

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Understanding Cyber Risk Management Basics

Cyber risk management is a broad term that defines your business’ process of identifying and responding to risks before they occur. It’s often overlooked, but it’s critical to your small business; as SMBs and mid-level enterprises are the most attractive targets to bad actors. 

Cybercriminals deliberately hunt smaller organizations because they typically combine valuable data with minimal security barriers. Even at a smaller scale, your customer payment information, intellectual property, and business credentials offer the same value as larger enterprises because they’re more accessible; requiring less work for a comparable “reward.” 

The first step to mitigating these risks is to manage them proactively. Below, our experts have summarized the essential cyber risk management steps to take as you create your strategy.

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Managing Cybersecurity Risks: Essential Risk Assessment Steps

Effective risk management looks different for every business. However, they all have one thing in common: A mapped and methodical plan that encompasses every area of your operation that could be vulnerable to a cyber attack. 

Identifying Critical Digital Assets in Your Business 

Every small business has its digital “criticals,” or the assets that attackers want the most (that you can least afford to lose). We recommend starting your inventory with the most critical assets first—think your CRM, financial records, and email systems—before moving on to other auxiliary systems that keep your business running. 

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Other places to consider in your inventory include: 

• Cloud storage accounts 
• Staff access points and logins 
• Third-party vendor systems and services 

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Once you have your comprehensive list of assets, it’s time to assign business value to each. This is subjective—but many IT experts choose to calculate the worth by asking a series of questions; such as: 

• What would the direct financial impact be if this system was compromised? 
• Could we function without this? Why or why not? 

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Once these questions are asked, stakeholders work together to assign an actual dollar-based value amount to each asset. 

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Cost-Effective Security Measures

Thankfully, small business security doesn’t require enterprise-level spending. It’s best to focus on high-impact low-cost solutions that offer the greatest value to the greatest number of people on your team—directly addressing concerns and vulnerabilities that you have now instead of ones that you anticipate in the future. Once you have a strong foundation laid, you can begin to branch out and explore other preventative strategies and tools to bolster your cybersecurity posture. 

The first few steps we recommend small businesses take include: 

Choosing a Business-Grade Password Manager 

These tools are often inexpensive, averaging $5-$10 per user per month, and they’re incredibly useful ways to mitigate risks associated with password use and sharing across your organization. 1Password, Lastpass, and Bitwarden are all fantastic inexpensive options for rapidly scaling small businesses. 

Employing 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) 

2FA costs nothing on most platforms, and prevented 98.6% of hack attempts using leaked credentials in Microsoft’s test in 2022. Ensuring that your company has an “always-on” policy is a great first step to securing information across your business accounts—and it’s especially useful to enforce with employees who work from home or within a hybrid agreement, as they may experience a higher breach potential. 

Maintain a Backup Strategy 

Around 35% of companies that experience data loss don’t fully recover. We recommend that you secure your data using multiple methods and avenues, ensuring that nothing is left to chance. Some businesses use a 3-2-1 backup strategy, keeping multiple types of data on two different media types—leaving one copy stored either offsite or in the cloud. Others use automated backup services to ensure continuity in the event of an attack or a breach. No matter what you choose, however, it’s important to stay consistent with it. Your organization is only as strong as its posture, policy, and execution of these steps. 

Selecting a Vulnerability Management Solution 

Windows auto-update may suffice for a time, but a vulnerability management solution that’s comprehensive and strategic will pay for itself in the risks you’re able to prevent. Sweeping your cyber landscape, this tool proactively helps IT managers identify the risks they’re working against, offering insightful 360-degree reports, prioritization support, and remediation options, depending on the depth of the tool.

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Securing a Future of Success: Creating a Cyber Security Culture

Ultimately, your strongest cyber risk management asset isn’t technology or a tool. It’s your people. Your team can be either your biggest asset or weakness in your security landscape depending on how they’re taught, and how well they retain what they’re taught. Using jargon-free security policies is an ideal place to start for most SMBs—and once the rules are known and established, ongoing cybersecurity training is helpful to keep your staff up to date with the latest risks. 

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Takeaway

The cyber threats facing your small business aren't slowing down, but you don't need to tackle everything at once. Start with what matters most: know what you're protecting, understand where you're vulnerable, put basic security tools in place (especially that multi-factor authentication!), get your team on board, and have a simple plan for when something goes wrong. Awareness is the first step to managing cybersecurity risks. 

Small businesses have different needs than enterprise companies do when it comes to risk management. That's why we built Guardare—a cybersecurity solution that actually makes sense for small businesses without massive security teams (or any team at all). Connect with us today to join our beta group and gain access to our tool for free.

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