Many small and medium businesses make a critical mistake: assuming that having fewer resources or high-profile customers somehow keeps them safe from cybercriminals.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
While breaches like those at the House of Commons and WestJet make headlines, attacks targeting SMBs often go unnoticed, but the consequences can be just as severe. And even if your data and resources seem less appealing, SMBs are increasingly targeted, and the risk is growing. According to technology company N-ABLE’s 2025 Annual Threat Report, detected threat instances affecting SMBs jumped 273% between June 2024 and June 2025.
So how can you reduce that risk? By understanding the threats that affect your business and learning the best practices to defend against them.
This report is the perfect starting point. We’ve broken down the key insights so you can take action and safeguard your business from costly breaches, ideally alongside a managed IT provider who understands the level of cybersecurity companies in Calgary need to strengthen their defenses.
Want to get the full picture? Grab your copy of the report before we get started!
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The Key Threats that Routinely Burn Small and Medium Businesses
Just one breach can disrupt operations, drain resources, and damage your reputation in ways that take months or even years to recover from. Understanding what’s putting your business at risk is the first step to staying ahead and protecting everything you’ve worked so hard to build.
Here are a few of the biggest threats that SMBs face today:
Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS)
Ransomware attacks have become increasingly common: in fact, according to N-ABLE, 88% of confirmed SMB breaches involved ransomware or data extortion, where bad actors leverage weaknesses like exposed devices or ill-configured remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools to enter systems and hold them hostage. Yet what’s even scarier now is that a lack of technical skills no longer serves as a barrier for wannabe cybercriminals looking to make money off exploiting vulnerable businesses. With a criminal business model like RaaS, ransomware developers create and maintain malware, then sell or lease it to others who carry out attacks.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
This social engineering cyberattack method is a more sophisticated form of phishing. Rather than simply sending a generic email purporting to be from a person’s bank or a government agency, criminals launch highly targeted attacks that involve impersonating a trusted executive, vendor, or partner. They rely on careful research and small, smart moves to infiltrate your systems, which makes them much more challenging to detect. Then, once inside, they’ll send emails to regular trusted contacts, perhaps in the form of a fake DocuSign signature request or OneDrive document sharing notification. Their goal is to trick these stakeholders into transferring money or revealing sensitive information.
Credential Stuffing and MFA Fatigue
Credential stuffing is a common attack where cybercriminals use stolen usernames and passwords from past breaches to break into accounts across multiple platforms. Because many employees reuse the same login details for both personal and work accounts, these automated attacks can quickly give criminals access to sensitive business systems.
Once inside, attackers often seek ways to bypass any extra layers of defenses, like if you’ve enabled multi-factor authentication (MFA). They may bombard users with endless MFA push notifications, counting on them to accidentally approve a fake request out of frustration or distraction.
What Are the Key Reasons That SMBs Face Increased Vulnerability and Risk?
Cybercriminals are strategic, and they’ve realized that SMBs offer a high return for relatively little effort. Let’s discuss a few reasons why your SMB may be an appealing target right now:
Modernizing your operations expanded your attack surface
Adopting digital technologies like cloud technology, IoT devices and SaaS applications has allowed many small businesses to streamline operations and compete more effectively with larger organizations. However, integrating these tools into your workplace has also created more entry points for bad actors to exploit. Without adequate data protection measures, many organizations have made their data more accessible to the criminals who seek it.
Threat actors are leveraging these same technologies to scale their crimes
On the flipside, the innovations that have come from digital transformation have empowered attackers to transform their methods into more effective, professionalized operations.
Even if they aren’t great writers, generative AI lets them produce highly convincing phishing messages in seconds, tailored to mimic the tone and style of real colleagues or business partners. With automated scanning tools, they can sweep the internet for unpatched software, weak configurations, and exposed devices at a scale no human could match.
Add to this the growing popularity of cybercrime-as-a-service models that we discussed earlier. With these types of advancements, cybercriminals are operating with the same efficiency, speed, and scalability as the businesses they’re targeting (or even better), making the threat more persistent and dangerous than ever before.
Attacking SMBs offers cybercriminals a quicker return-on-investment
Cybercriminals have recognized that small and medium-sized businesses are often easier targets—and more lucrative—than large corporations. While a bigger enterprise might bring in a multimillion-dollar ransom, it takes time and advanced skills to pull off. By contrast, attackers can hit dozens of SMBs for smaller payouts using off-the-shelf malware, knowing many lack backups or response plans and may feel forced to pay. Or they may use the large volumes of easily accessible, unprotected SMB information, like stolen customer data, financial details, or designs, and resell it or use it for fraud.
Fall 2025 Outlook: Four Ways to Spend This Season Fortifying Your Perimeter
No need to feel hopeless, even in the face of these risks. There are several simple, yet effective measures your organization can implement to boost your security.
- Make multi-factor-authentication your default: Every account associated with your business or staff should rely on an extra layer of security beyond just passwords. Even if a hacker steals or guesses your password, the requirement for a second form of verification—like a code or push notification—will make it much harder to access your account.
- Implement strong access control and permissions: Embracing an identity-driven zero trust approach will be your best approach to minimizing a data breach’s impact on your systems. Use single sign-on to centralize access and management, and structure your systems based on the key Zero Trust principle of least-privileged access: every user can only access the data and systems they absolutely need, for the time they need it.
- Use stronger authentication methods beyond passwords: As we’ve discussed, passwords alone are no longer enough to protect your accounts from today’s cyberattacks. Beyond setting up MFA, use stronger authentication methods like passkeys, hardware security keys, or biometric logins. You’ll be adding robust layers of protection that are extremely difficult for attackers to bypass and exploit.
- Leverage advanced technologies to detect threats early: If there’s unusual activity on your network, your business should be able to see it before a hacker creates serious harm. We recommend an advanced endpoint detection and response solution so you can automatically identify breaches quickly, contain them, and minimize damage to your systems.
Strengthen Your Operations with PC Corp
Running a small or medium business today means dealing with more than just day-to-day operations. You also have to think about cybersecurity. Threats like ransomware, business email compromise, and credential attacks are real, and even a single breach can disrupt your business and put your data at risk.
And while understanding the risks is important, having someone you can rely on to manage and protect your IT makes all the difference. If you’re looking for a cybersecurity company in Calgary, consider partnering with PC Corp. We’ll oversee your systems through our managed IT services, providing practical support, expert guidance and robust cybersecurity solutions to create a strong foundation that protects your operations.
From setting up stronger authentication and access controls to monitoring for unusual activity, we help you stay one step ahead so you can focus on your success and growth.
Take the guesswork out of cybersecurity. Contact us to discuss how we’ll empower you to protect your business with confidence.
