Cymulate is proud to usher in a new age in the cyber security of small and midsized businesses (SMBs). With the launch of our new BAS for SMB bundles, it has never been simpler and more affordable to get your security posture up to par with the most security-mature enterprises.
When it comes to cyber security, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have it hard. Aware of their limited cyber security resources, threat actors specifically target them for their commercial accounts. According to the 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations report, 43% of breaches involved small business victims over the past year, and 71% of them were financially motivated.
In the US, the Small Business Administration Cyber Awareness Act was recently passed, as well as the Small Business Development Center Cyber Training Act in a bid to boost the cyber security of small businesses nationwide.
Economic Growth Engines
The exact definition of a small or medium-sized enterprise differs from one country to another. However, what all countries can agree on is that these companies, make up the vast majority of enterprises, ranging from 70% to 95% of enterprises, according to an OECD report. Importantly, they serve as “drivers for growth and innovation,” making them critical to a country’s economic strength resilience.
Key Security Challenges Faced by SMBs
When studying the differences between cyber security for SMBs and larger enterprises, several components factor into how securing SMBs is different. Here’s a breakdown.
- No 24×7 Cyber Security Coverage – Whereas larger companies have security operations centers (SOCs) staffed around the clock, to monitor systems for any suspicious activity, SMEs only have business-hour coverage at best.
- Greater Exposure to Supply Chain Attacks – SMBs can’t do it all. Their natural inclination to outsource numerous services to agencies, contractors and offshore firms translates into a greater number of touchpoints with other firms, and greater exposure to supply chain attacks.
- Fragmented Security Control Visibility – According to a recent SANS Institute poll, 65% of organizations have 10 to 20 security products deployed, while 27% have 20 to 60 security products deployed. Maintaining solutions such as SIEM and SOAR to cope with security sprawl may be a challenge for SMBs as they require ongoing maintenance and monitoring.
- Limited Need to Comply with Industry Regulations – Depending on the vertical in which they operate, and the countries in which they do business, some SMEs may need to comply with regulations such as PCI DSS, NY DFS, SOX, GDPR and HIPAA—and others may not. Without the regulatory pressure to perform security risk assessments, some SMEs may be less inclined to invest in their security posture, making them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
Bridging the Gap through Continuous Security Testing
So how can these companies bring their security posture up to par with larger enterprises? Fortunately, automated security testing tools, such as breach and attack simulation (BAS), have made it faster, simpler, and less expensive to get enterprise-grade visibility into the effectiveness of current security controls and improve these organizations’ security posture. More specifically, small and midsized companies can leverage BAS to:
- Gain immediate, actionable insights faster – Within a matter of minutes, organizations can get comprehensive technical and executive-level reports, allowing them to see where they are vulnerable across their infrastructure, and how to mitigate identified gaps.
- Prioritize remediation – Using an exposure score that measures the potential impact of a simulated attack and other factors, security teams can invest their time and effort where the risk is highest, helping them make the most out of their current resources.
- Test resilience against the latest immediate threats – By running simulations of the latest and most dangerous threats seen in the wild, including strains of ransomware, Trojans, cryptominers, worms, APTs, and phishing campaigns, organizations can quickly take corrective steps to thwart these attacks and avoid making the headlines.
- Continuously validate controls – Instead of solely relying on periodic, limited scope security testing, such as annual pen tests or vulnerability scans, SMBs gain the 24×7 visibility they need into their security posture, on-demand, so they can continuously identify any gaps and quickly reduce their attack surface.
- Protect against supply chain attacks – By testing the security effectiveness of controls used to protect touchpoints with third parties, such as email gateways, web gateways and protect against lateral movement should a system become compromised, companies can better protect against supply chain attacks.
- Secure public-facing apps and portals – Consumer-facing applications and portals are vulnerable to a myriad of attacks, as recently demonstrated by the CapitalOne breach which resulted from a simple-to-fix misconfigured web application firewall (WAF). To avoid a breach or data exfiltration performed through these critical assets, organizations can run attack simulations to see if their security should be hardened.
Cymulate – BAS Made Simple
Recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor just two short years after its inception, Cymulate’s SaaS-based breach and attack simulation platform is ideal for SMBs. Here’s why:
- Simple to deploy
- Easy to use and manage
- Fully automated
- Simulates the latest threats
- Tests across the kill chain
- Customizable
- Actionable insights
- Intuitive reporting
Learn more about BAS for SMBs
To explore how Cymulate can put you on par with enterprise-level security, get the Euronext case study.
Test the effectiveness of your security controls against possible cyber threats with a 14-day trial of Cymulate’s platform.