The more a company’s infrastructure grows, the more weak spots it has. And that’s true for all companies — from large corporations with deep pockets that are able to invest more in their defenses, to small and medium-sized businesses. And despite their more modest capabilities, smaller companies are just as tempting a target for attackers.

New times, new risks

Cloud platforms, remote access, and AI help businesses scale up and get more done. But they also give attackers extra ways to get into corporate infrastructure. For example, remote employees’ personal devices have become a foothold that’s hard to control. And thanks to AI, phishing emails are almost impossible to tell from real ones: users can no longer spot a scammer by their spelling mistakes.

There’s another reason why new threats keep appearing: companies are slowly learning how to handle the old ones. Take backups. Just a few years ago they were sold as a cure-all against ransomware. Now they’re less effective, because at some point attackers started stealing data and demanding payment not for decryption, but for not making it public. What’s at stake here isn’t just business processes, but the organization’s reputation too. We wrote about this scheme in more detail in a separate blog post.

The scariest part is that an attacked company’s problems don’t end on the day of the incident. The next few days (or even weeks) are often much harder. This is when the team needs to quickly deal with the aftermath of an attack and to make sure another can’t happen again. Growing companies often have to throw their entire small IT force at the problem, so getting back to normal work can take a long time.

Three Achilles’ heels at once

According to the Global Kaspersky B2B Market Pulse survey, most SMBs only think about security when circumstances force them to; for example, after an incident, when expanding their infrastructure, or when a potential partner asks them to strengthen their perimeter before signing a contract. Yet only a handful treat continuous cybersecurity monitoring as a core part of running their business.

When a company finally decides to get serious about security, it runs into three constraints: people, processes, and technology. Let’s look at each one.

• People. In a company with up to 500 employees, the IT department is usually just a few people. They handle all technical issues and have little to do with cybersecurity. When things get tough, these specialists may simply lack the expertise to deal with things. Other employees can be a weak link too. Accountants, lawyers, and other staff with access to confidential information often aren’t familiar with security rules.
• Processes.A small IT department always has a backlog with a long queue of tasks; therefore, fresh updates and patches don’t get installed right away. As a result, attackers have plenty of time to take advantage of a vulnerability that isn’t fixed in time. Meanwhile, other employees may not know how to respond to suspicious emails, or how to store and share passwords safely. And there’s simply no one to keep an eye on them.
• Technology. Threats evolve alongside a business’s technology. For example, once a company has moved part of its infrastructure to the cloud, relying on a classic antivirus alone becomes pointless.

So small and medium-sized businesses become easy targets for attackers not so much due to their size, but because they don’t pay enough attention to the key building blocks of cybersecurity. As to what this can lead to, and how the tables can be turned in a company’s favor — read on for a real-world case that demonstrates this.

Case study: ERP system breach

Let’s look at a real-world attack on a company with 450 employees. When the incident happened, the company was migrating its ERP system to the cloud. The data had already been moved, but the protection hadn’t been set up yet. And that limbo state is exactly what let the attackers pull off their campaign.

The attackers used a fairly simple tactic. Posing as an external ERP integrator, they sent the finance department a file with an “adjusted invoice”. When an employee opened the attachment, the malicious code inside it exploited a vulnerability in a local application, and the attackers took control of the device. There they found saved credentials that let them log in to a support account and get administrator rights on the cloud ERP server. With that account, they got into the server and stole the company’s confidential data.

We analyzed the mistakes that made this incident possible, and came back to the same formula: people + processes + technology. The company did provide employee training, but it was mostly a formality and did nothing to help people learn to spot email phishing. Security updates weren’t installed right away either, which is why the computer had an unpatched vulnerability. On top of that, privileged credentials were stored right on the employee’s device, which gave the attackers a direct path to administrator access. Finally, the workstations had no EDR, and the cloud ERP server had no workload protection.

How SMBs can strengthen their defenses

The best way to start is with the three key areas we covered above. And this isn’t about simply throwing money at security. What’s needed is a clear, step-by-step plan that makes the most of the resources the company already has.

Hands-on training

Employees are a business’s first line of defense, so it’s especially important to help them form safe cyberhabits. Many companies understand this and duly run computer literacy training; however, often employees show up in droves, yet they keep on making the same old mistakes.

The problem is that most training isn’t relevant to the people taking it. People in the finance department know that attackers can send phishing emails, but what does that have to do with their job? To head off questions like that, we recommend combining cybersecurity theory with simulations of real cyberattacks. That way, employees can safely step into the shoes of an attacker’s target. Start by training employees who have privileged access to systems, and also those who handle confidential information.

To keep training from becoming a formality, track progress regularly. For example, send employees suspicious test emails from time to time, and measure how fast and how well they react: how many recipients click the link, and how many report the threat.

Structured processes

Set up clear priorities for installing updates and patches. This helps avoid two extremes: running for months with open gaps in the infrastructure, or rushing to fix every vulnerability without asking how critical it is for specific business processes. Setting up centralized vulnerability management also helps, which we explained how to do in a separate post. Don’t rush to expand the infrastructure or move it to the cloud until the company has proper protection and monitoring in place.

Another key point: assign an owner to every process. Someone should be personally responsible for regular cybersecurity training, installing updates, and the timing and methods of incident response. That way, security tasks get done on time — even when the IT team has limited resources.

Gradual rollout of security solutions

It’s impossible to build reliable business protection without specialized products, but buying everything at once won’t help either. New solutions should match the needs of the infrastructure. A good approach is to add tools as the need to do so comes up; for example, to prioritize vulnerabilities more effectively or to strengthen the security of email or cloud environments. One way to tailor security to the company’s needs is to use our Security Modules , which work with Kaspersky Next Optimum — a solution for growing SMB and mid-market businesses.

Another option is to move to a more advanced solution as the infrastructure grows. The foundation of cybersecurity can be laid with Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations, which provides basic endpoint protection and control. Then, when needed, the company can move up to solutions with a broader range of capabilities, from Kaspersky Next EDR Optimum to Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum, or straight to Kaspersky Next MXDR Optimum. Our most comprehensive offering — Kaspersky MXDR Optimum — combines advanced detection and response that goes beyond endpoints and adapts to the needs of a growing business, 24/7 monitoring, and proactive threat hunting and investigation by Kaspersky experts.

Cybersecurity is often perceived in a highly formal, checkbox way: a mandatory line item in the budget, insurance against an attack, or an extra task for the IT team. But for SMBs, this approach doesn’t work well. As a company grows, so does its dependency on digital technology, which increases the number of potential entry points for attackers. Cloud services, business applications, extra devices for new hires: all of this generates new risks. Eventually, the question of how much to invest in cybersecurity gives way to a different one: how can it help the business grow without putting extra strain on the budget and staff? That’s the point where cybersecurity stops being just defense against threats, and instead becomes a driver of business growth.

The cost of a mistake

According to the new Global Kaspersky B2B Market Pulse survey, 86% of SMBs were hit by at least one cyberincident last year, while 25% of those incidents resulted in financial losses and business downtime. And it’s not always about a sophisticated targeted attack. Often the threat comes from employees’ everyday actions, such as using unverified software, personal devices, third-party AI services, or weak passwords. And since the IT team still has to handle its usual workload, a vulnerability in the infrastructure can go unnoticed for a long time.

At a small company, the fallout from an incident can affect not just a single IT process, but virtually the entire business — with disastrous results: employees can’t get any work done, customers get no services, data becomes unavailable, and the launch of a new project gets delayed. The company is forced to divert resources away from a growth focus to one of recovery. And that’s how an incident turns into a business risk.

More doesn’t mean better

At first glance, the solution seems obvious: if the number of threats keeps going up, businesses just need to deploy more security tools. But SMBs have another limiting factor: resources. In many companies, one small IT team juggles infrastructure, applications, cloud services, employee devices, and technical support. Cybersecurity becomes just another task on the list, often without a matching increase in headcount or expertise.

According to the mentioned survey, SMB and mid-market IT and security professionals themselves point out several internal constraints: a shortage of incident responders, heavy workloads on IT teams, delayed security investments, and rapid growth in the number of devices and services in use. This can create a vicious cycle: the business grows, the IT environment gets more complex, security becomes harder to manage, risks pile up, and security investment keeps getting pushed back until an incident finally happens.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

After detecting an attacker in their infrastructure, companies typically scramble to reinforce several areas all at once: employee training, device security, monitoring, cloud security, and so on. According to the survey, оn average, businesses take action across 4.5 areas after an incident. This approach has an obvious drawback: the organization first suffers the consequences, and only then figures out what kind of protection it was missing in the first place. In other words, cybersecurity ends up being a reaction to something that’s already happened.

A more sustainable approach is to evolve a corporate security posture gradually and in sync with the business, anticipating changes in its infrastructure and processes. It’s not necessary to predict every possible threat. It’s enough for the IT team to regularly ask themselves a few practical questions:

• Which technologies and systems does our business depend on today?
• What’s changed in our IT environment?
• Where are the biggest risks right now?
• What can our team realistically keep under control?
• What new security requirements will emerge at the next stage of growth?

Two paths for evolving corporate cybersecurity

When a company focuses on steadily building up its cybersecurity posture, two paths open up: raising its existing level of protection, and expanding coverage to address risks tied to new business needs. A business can pursue either path on its own or combine them.

Path 1: hardening protection

As a business and its security requirements mature, a company can move to more advanced levels of protection and, if needed, bring in managed services’ expertise. That’s exactly the approach behind Kaspersky Next Optimum — an offering for growing SMB and mid-market businesses. A small company may start with Kaspersky Next EDR Foundations, and later move up to the next protection tiers — EDR Optimum, XDR Optimum, or, if managed protection is needed, MXDR Optimum — as its security maturity grows.

Path 2: expanding coverage

Sometimes a company doesn’t need to move to a fundamentally different level of protection. It needs to solve a specific problem that came up as the business grew. For example, the company might ramp up its use of cloud infrastructure, discover that employees have become a major source of risk, or find itself needing to manage vulnerabilities systemically. In such cases, protection can be extended with Security Modules . They’re compatible with Kaspersky Next Optimum, and allow IT teams to cover specific needs as they emerge without having to replace the existing security foundation. Here are the key capabilities of each module:

• Security Awareness helps reduce risks tied to the human factor, and turns employees into an extra layer of defense.
• Email Security strengthens the protection of corporate communications and sensitive data against threats that spread through email.
• Workload Security helps protect cloud and hybrid environments as businesses shift more of their workloads to the cloud.
• Vulnerability Management lets IT teams identify and prioritize vulnerabilities to address them before attackers get the chance to exploit them.
• Threat Lookup & Analysis provides extra context when investigating suspicious files, objects, and threat indicators.

Cybersecurity as a process: the benefits

Small and medium-sized businesses shouldn’t treat cybersecurity as a target to be reached and roll out every possible security tool all at once. It’s far more practical to treat it as an ongoing process closely tied to the company’s growth. This approach helps solve several problems simultaneously:

1. Maintain business continuity. The sooner a threat is detected and stopped, the less likely it is to turn into a serious incident that disrupts the company’s operations. Protecting against threats, catching them early, and responding promptly all help lower the risk of downtime, and keep business processes running smoothly.
2. Make the most of limited resources. Careful planning of corporate security strategy goes hand in hand with process automation, centralized visibility, and investigation tools. These, in turn, help cut down on routine tasks, and free up resources for what really matters.
3. Build a foundation for future growth. By strengthening security as the business grows, the company builds a solid foundation for whatever comes next — whether that’s workload protection, more advanced vulnerability management, or deeper threat analysis. There’ll be no need to rebuild the defenses from scratch each time new business processes emerge.

Ultimately, well-built cybersecurity is more than just a tool for prevention and response. It’s what lets a company keep working despite a constantly growing number of threats, adopt new technology, seize new opportunities, and grow. Visit our website to learn more about how the Kaspersky Next Optimum and Security Modules help growing companies build protection that matches their current needs.