One of the top IT challenges for SMBs is the rising cost of technology. While it’s common to equate the cost of software or hardware with the upfront or monthly fees you pay to use them, there’s more to it than that.
For instance, how much would it cost your business if you experienced a security breach? According to recent surveys, SMBs generally have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to recover from one.
As security breaches become more prevalent (and costly), this is something that every business owner should know the answer to. So, let’s take a look at what recent research shows about the cost of a security breach and how extensive the damage can be within your business.
How Much Does a Security Breach Cost?
Let’s dig into what the data says.
According to a 2026 Proton survey, this is how much their survey respondents had to pay as a result of a recent cyberattack:
About a quarter of the reported attacks cost these businesses between $10,000 and $49,999. Another quarter of these breaches cost between $50,000 and $99,999 to recover from.
A recent Microsoft SMB Cybersecurity report dug a little deeper to expose why security breaches cost so much. Because it’s rarely just the time you spend to clean up an infected website or to boot a hacker out of your network or computer. There’s almost always more to it than that.
Here we see both the average and the higher end costs of an SMB cyberattack as well as the breakdown of those costs:
The average cost to investigate and recover from a security breach is $77,957. The severity of the attack, how long it went unnoticed, and the kind of information stolen in the process will impact this number.
As you can see, investigation/recovery alone has cost SMBs up to four million dollars in some cases.
If you’re lucky, this is the only cost you’ll sustain after a breach. Others, unfortunately, won’t be so lucky.
In the Proton report, we see how many businesses have had to deal with other costs as a result of a cyberattack:
Here’s what a security breach cost them:
- 46% had to pay for the loss of data.
- 38% lost money due to business disruption (i.e. downtime).
- 35% had to pay legal and/or IT fees.
- 30% lost customer trust.
- 29% had money stole from them by hackers.
- 24% received penalties for the data privacy breach.
Only 4% reported no significant impact on their business after a security breach.
Do SMBs Even Have to Worry About Cyberattacks?
While the hope is that your business will never be impacted by a security breach, no one is immune.
According to Microsoft, 26% of small business owners believe their companies are too small to be a target. However, roughly 30% of SMBs have experienced a security breach in the last year.
Unfortunately, hackers are more savvy and creative than ever. If they find something of value inside your business (even if it’s just hijacking your blog to push their own content and links), they’ll find a way to exploit it.
And there are many ways for them to do it.
39% of those surveyed by Proton said that their security breach happened as a result of human error. So, this could mean anything from an employee using a weak password to falling victim to a phishing scam.
Insufficient login security, email scams, infected website code, breached networks, publicly accessing a private network, and so on. There are many different points of entry for hackers and they know how to exploit them all.
To make matters worse, data breaches don’t always come from inside a business. Third-party vendors can also put your data at risk.
For instance, 85% of businesses use cloud-based services. However, 14% of them have serious concerns about how safe their data is in the hands of their software providers.
At the same time, 69% of companies use AI tools. 45% are unclear how their data is handled by these companies while 30% don’t trust them with it.
According to the Microsoft report, 9 in 10 SMBs say that security breaches are an ever-looming threat to their businesses. So, to answer the question “Do SMBs even have to worry about cyberattacks?”, the answer is “Yes”.
Next Steps for Your Business
CrowdStrike’s State of SMB Cybersecurity Survey reported the following:
“Two-thirds of SMBs say cost prevents them from upgrading security tools, and only 7% believe their current budget is fully sufficient.”
We get that. It can be incredibly difficult to justify spending money on something in your business in the off chance that something bad happens. But with a third of SMBs getting hacked in the last year alone and the average cost of recovery numbering in the thousands, is that a chance you can take?
If the cost of cybersecurity solutions is the only thing standing in your way, let’s talk. While it’s important to have a comprehensive security strategy in place, it doesn’t need to cost you an arm and a leg. We can work with you to find a comprehensive and cost-effective solution for your business.
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