Small businesses are targeted by cybercriminals far more often than most realize, and when these attacks occur, they rarely make headlines compared to the high-profile breaches affecting large corporations. Across industries, small businesses contend with constant attempts to infiltrate their networks and exploit weaknesses. In 2023 alone, nearly half of all cyberattacks targeted small businesses, confirming that hackers view them as easy prey due to their typically weaker security measures and limited resources for protection. While the loss of customer data, money, and operational downtime wreaks havoc on the affected organizations, these stories frequently remain untold outside of local circles even when the damage is dire enough to close a company permanently.
The media coverage tends to concentrate on large company data breaches. Incidents at Target or Sony get national attention for days or weeks, while the countless ransomware attacks, payroll scams, and business email compromise cases suffered by small businesses go unreported. This doesn’t diminish the impact: for the owners and employees of a hacked small business, the consequences are often devastating, both financially and reputationally. Consider the fate of Efficient Escrow of California, which shuttered its doors after hackers stole $1.5 million by breaching their accounts in a sophisticated malware scam. Another local example, Green Ford Sales in Kansas, saw thousands of dollars disappear as cybercriminals manipulated payroll data and redirected funds, leaving the dealership to pick up the pieces without the safety net of media advocacy or strong regulatory recourse.
For most small businesses, a cyberattack can become an existential crisis. Statistics show that upward of sixty percent of small organizations forced to respond to a major breach or ransomware event close within six months, unable to recover from the costs or repair the damage to their reputation. If customer data is exposed, clients may turn away, and the trust painstakingly built over years can evaporate in a matter of days. These attacks often go unreported not because they aren’t serious, but because the scope of fewer people affected, smaller sums stolen, and less public outcry draws little attention from major media outlets. Yet for the business owner, the stakes are just as high as they are for their Fortune 500 counterparts.
Hackers know that small businesses pose easier targets: fewer cybersecurity measures are in place, many lack dedicated IT staff, and too often, business leaders assume their organizations are too small for cybercriminal interest. In reality, small businesses are bombarded by phishing attempts, malware, ransomware, and social engineering attacks comprising the majority of cybersecurity incidents in the market. They receive more malicious emails per employee than large enterprises and face higher attack rates from social engineering schemes targeting unaware or under-trained staff. When businesses are breached, they may pay ransoms, endure protracted downtime, and face steep recovery costs, often spending anywhere from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars remedying the damage.
Despite the risk, cyber breaches at SMBs continue to occur outside the public spotlight. The ongoing lack of visibility in national news doesn’t make these incidents any less severe, nor does it diminish the importance of building strong cyber defenses. For small businesses, cybersecurity is not a luxury, it’s a business-critical necessity. The only way to prevent joining the list of untold victims is to invest in education, basic security technologies, and staff training. The fate of many businesses rests not on public attention, but on preparation and resilience in the face of growing and underreported cyber threats.