A rearview mirror into last year’s threats

2024 saw a significant rise in data breaches, with the global cost of data breach reaching a record high of 4.88 million dollars and over 75% rise in cyberattacks per organization. With the global rise in cyber threats, small and medium-sized businesses must be better prepared in 2025 with proactive measures to secure their business.

Let’s have a glimpse at some of the most immediate threats to best practices that businesses can leverage to secure themselves in 2025

5 best cybersecurity practices for small to medium-sized businesses

A whopping 94% of SMBs have reported that they have suffered a cyber-attack at least once in in 2024. The fact emphasizes that cybercriminals don’t solely target large corporations and that SMBs are an easy favourite for cybercriminals because compared to large corporations, they are less prepared in security.

Before we delve into the best practices, let us have a glimpse at some of the top threats for small and medium businesses in 2025:

• AI-based threats
• Ransomware
• Human error
• Non-compliance
• The growing cybersecurity skills gap
• Rising cost and complexity of cybersecurity solutions
• The following are some of the best practices to prevent security threats

1. Ensure cybersecurity hygiene practices

SMBs must prioritize cybersecurity in their budget and create a culture where cybersecurity is a shared responsibility in 2025. Cybersecurity hygiene practices are the best practices that ensure that your organization has a fundamental level of cybersecurity.

These practices include:

• Setting a policy that requires using strong passwords, updating them regularly, and not using the same password everywhere
• Using multi-factor authentication and location-based notification for login
• Enabling data encryption to ensure the security of data in transit
• Keeping all the applications and software updated

2. Creating backups

Cybercriminals will find new ways to target sensitive personal and financial data in 2025. Therefore, ensuring the security of all sensitive data should be a top priority for SMBs. Keeping multiple copies of sensitive files as backups secures them from loss in a data breach and allows for quick recovery.

It also significantly reduces the impact of damage on data. Follow a 3-2-1 approach for backups in which you keep three copies of your files stored in 2 different forms of media and one copy away from your primary location.

3. Embracing Zero Trust Approach

A zero-trust approach necessitates verifying everyone and trusting no one. It is an approach where every attempt to log in must be authenticated. It secures an organization against identity-based and other cyber threats that take advantage of preassigned authentications. SMBs in 2025 must embrace the zero-trust approach because it not only secures them from identity-based and other cyber threats but also provides cybersecurity benefits like strong security in remote work scenarios and superior network security.

4. Bridging gaps in human awareness

Human error was a leading cause of data breach. 74% of chief information security officers identified human error as one the top concern in 2024. Therefore, it is essential for SMBs to pre-emptively identify the gaps in human awareness of cyber risks and best practices to prevent cyber risks.

5. Taking assistance of experts

Small and Medium-sized businesses often face the challenge of limited teams, limited budgets, and frequent cyber threats for proactive security assessments, monitoring of their infrastructure, and incident response. It is where they should consider taking assistance from cybersecurity professionals who can help them with multiple aspects of cybersecurity, including:

• 24×7 monitoring of infrastructure for early detection and response to threats
• Integrate threat intelligence with applicable compliance cybersecurity framework
• Monitor and manage their cybersecurity setup (like SIEM, EDR, firewall, etc.)