Born from the desperation of businesses to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses hastened digital transformation initiatives and shifted their operations online. However, this digital reliance also made businesses exposed to more cyber security threats such as phishing, malware infections, and more recently, social engineering. IBM’s 2025 Cost of Data Breach Report revealed that while the cost of data breaches is on the downturn globally (average of $4.4 million in 2025), costs in the US went on an upslope to $10.22 million in 2025 (vs. $9.36 million in 2024).
Unfortunately, cyberattacks are not just quantifiable by these immediate losses. In fact, the most long-lasting effect of a cybersecurity breach is the erosion of customer trust. From a survey by PCI Pal in 2018, approximately 21% of customers do not avail the same company’s services after a data breach while 83% avoid the said business for several months after the incident.
Despite these imminent concerns, many small businesses underestimate their vulnerability to cyber threats. Around 30% of small businesses do not think that they are targets of cybersecurity threats. Additionally, 59% of small to medium businesses across the United Kingdom and the United States do not have a strong cybersecurity posture (Ponemon Institute, 2018). This is mainly because these companies lack the proper manpower and financial capacity to have a robust and proactive cyber defense. These vulnerabilities, however, are appealing vulnerabilities for a cyber-attack. In fact, despite the relatively smaller capital of SMBs, cyberattacks can still cost them around $120,000 to $1.24 million (Sharif and Mohammed, 2022).
As cyber criminals become more persistent and sophisticated with their attacks, it is becoming increasingly important for small and medium-sized business to have a stronger cybersecurity defense that would help them quickly identify vulnerabilities and develop strategies to effectively combat these attacks.