It Costs How Much?!? The Financial Pitfalls of Cyberattacks on SMBs

Cybercriminals are vipers. They’re like snakes in the grass, hiding behind their keyboards, waiting to strike. And if you're a small- and medium-sized business (SMB), your organization is the ideal lair for these serpents to slither into.

With cybercriminals becoming more sophisticated, SMBs like you must do more to protect yourselves. But at what price? That’s the daunting question many SMBs are forced to ask. Amidst your everyday challenges, the answer seems obvious: forgo investing in a robust cybersecurity solution for the time being. However, the alternative is to cross your fingers and hope hackers don’t find you. That, of course, isn’t the most prudent strategy, as the uncomfortable truth is threat actors now see your organization as a quick path to profit. Therefore, if your defenses are weak—or just not there—these digital crooks are likely to disrupt your operations, access sensitive data, and extort a heavy ransom.

In this article, we’ll explore the financial burdens of a cyberattack and why implementing a managed endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution can help prevent you from falling prey to cybercriminals.

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Why Cybercriminals Focus on SMBs

It’s not uncommon to find cybersecurity budgets being slashed left and right these days, especially among SMBs. With resources for defense being redirected—or worse yet, cut entirely—many SMBs no longer have the skills, technologies, or manpower to manage cyber threats on their own.

Cybercriminals are well aware of these shortcomings, making you an easily exploitable target. Unfortunately, many SMBs end up learning one lesson the hard way: cyberattack recovery costs can be significantly higher than the initial investment required for an effective cybersecurity solution.

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Many SMBs Aren’t Prepared for the Inevitable

In our report, The State of Cybersecurity for Mid-Sized Businesses in 2023, we discovered that nearly 25% of SMBs have either suffered a cyberattack or didn’t even realize they had suffered one in the past 12 months. More notably, we found the following resource gaps for mid-sized businesses:

61% don’t have dedicated cybersecurity experts
47% don’t have an incident response plan
27% don’t have cyber insurance coverage

Threat actors love that these gaps exist. It allows them to infiltrate networks, steal sensitive data, disrupt operations, and extort ransoms, all with little effort.

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Cyberattacks Can Be Costly, Even for Large Enterprises

SMBs need to be particularly vigilant. In 2023, Harvard Business Review revealed that breaches can result in an average stock price dip of 7.5%, with market cap losses in the billions.

If publicly traded companies—presumably with larger cybersecurity budgets and infrastructures—can be hit like this, then SMBs can be brought to their knees with similar breaches.

As an SMB, if you aren’t prepared to identify and stop cyberattacks, the financial burden can be debilitating, especially with indirect costs that also have hefty price tags. First, your normal operations may be disrupted, potentially requiring additional labor efforts and lengthened cash cycles just to return to normal. Plus, you may need to hire third parties to help you rebuild your systems. Finally, there may be additional fees associated with identity theft, credit monitoring, or even legal proceedings.

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A Managed EDR Solution Helps You Stay Ahead of Evolving Threats

Endpoint detection and response, or EDR, is a popular solution designed to flag threat activity before it becomes a larger problem. EDR solutions can detect, investigate, and mitigate potential threats across individual endpoints, such as computers, laptops, and mobile devices.

For typical EDRs to be impactful, however, security teams must constantly monitor for threats. But you may not always have these in-house experts on hand. In fact, even larger enterprises are struggling to acquire resources these days, as there’s a considerable shortage of cybersecurity talent.

This is why a managed cybersecurity solution—such as Huntress Managed EDR—is critical for SMBs today. Managed EDRs outsource your day-to-day tasks of threat monitoring, detection, and response to a dedicated team of cybersecurity professionals.

Specifically, Huntress Managed EDR is backed by a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC), staffed with real cybersecurity analysts. Our SOC experts manage and triage alerts on your behalf, helping you remediate issues quickly.

From ransom payments to lost data to operational disruptions, the list of unpleasantries can go on and on. If you ever find yourself on the wrong end of a malicious hack, the cybersecurity recovery costs alone can drain your coffers. A managed EDR solution, like Huntress Managed EDR backed by our 24/7 SOC, can help prevent these potential pitfalls while freeing up your budget for other vital areas of your business.

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Here’s the Kicker – There’s More at Stake Than Just Money

Today, it’s commonplace to find budgets being slashed, leaving cybersecurity staff overextended, overworked, or nonexistent. Simply put, your vulnerabilities create the ideal snake pit for slippery cybercriminals.

If your resources are limited, you may believe managed solutions are out of reach. But incident costs will often exceed the price of a managed EDR solution.

While we focused exclusively on cash in this article, the truth is there’s more than just bank accounts that can be wiped out. We invite you to dive deeper into the catastrophic costs of cyberattacks. Our latest eBook, The True Cost of a Cyberattack, reveals more than just the financial burdens, but also explores the reputational damage, psychological traumas, and legal ramifications these malicious attacks can bring about.