Mid-market companies regularly find themselves on the receiving end of cyber criminals’ attempts to breach their environment. 83% of mid-market organizations experienced at least one ransomware attempt in 2024, with 46% experiencing four or more.
Still, not all cyber breaches are created equal. The impact of a severe breach leading to significant downtime could cause recovery costs to balloon into the millions.
And cybercriminals know that mid-market businesses lack the headcount, deep pockets, and round-the-clock support of their Fortune 500 peers. For that reason, savvy criminals opt to attack SMBs and mid-market companies, knowing that they are easier targets that pose fewer obstacles. Limited IT budgets, understaffing, and reliance on consumer-grade tools leave mid-market firms exposed and vulnerable.
The Biggest Cybersecurity Risks Facing the Mid-Market Today
The rising use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation has transformed the way mid-market companies work, helping to increase efficiency, free employees’ time, and reduce errors. At the same time, AI and automation have also changed how criminals attempt to penetrate businesses’ defenses, allowing for quicker vulnerability detection. Automated attack tools empower cybercriminals to scale their assaults to a higher number of targets. Once infected with ransomware, a company may experience prolonged downtime, irreversible data loss, and potential compliance fines.
Phishing attacks continue to be the primary driver behind ransomware breaches. Now, cybercriminals – emboldened by automation and the scalable nature of AI – can exploit businesses’ vulnerabilities in a fraction of the time it would have taken years ago. With such risks on the rise, securing your operation’s cyber environment becomes that much more critical.
The Non-Negotiable in Cybersecurity: Endpoint Protection
Endpoint protection helps to safeguard the devices that make up your organization’s digital environment, from laptops and PCs to tablets and phones, and includes legacy antivirus tools and firewalls as well as more advanced detection systems. For example, if an employee mistakenly opens a phishing email and clicks the corrupted link, proper endpoint protection can isolate and neutralize the threat before it spreads, reducing downtime and data recovery complications.
Recommended endpoint protection strategies include:
- Policy management to define access rules and permissions per user
- Patch management to update potential system vulnerabilities
- Centralized control of network endpoints
- Advanced device control to grant access to certain devices and prevent it for others
- EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response) for real-time threat detection
- MFA (Multi-factor authentication) to block unauthorized access, even if credentials are compromised
Although that is not an exhaustive list of endpoint protection strategies, it is an exercise in best practices when trying to secure endpoints and minimize vulnerabilities.
Assessing Your Cybersecurity Risk
A cybersecurity assessment for mid-market businesses isolates where the most critical vulnerabilities lie. Key areas to evaluate include:
- Incomplete endpoint protection
- Unpatched software and legacy systems
- Gaps in employee cybersecurity awareness and training
Indeed, sometimes all it takes is a dated system or an unaware employee to compromise the security of your entire digital environment. A cybersecurity assessment helps to provide actionable data, insights, and reports, allowing leadership to understand where to invest first to optimize a company’s cybersecurity posture.
It’s important to remember that cybersecurity is not a one-size-fits-all plan. Each business’s defenses are tailored to its needs, vulnerabilities, and environment.
Managed Security Services: Changing the Game for Mid-Market Budgets
Managed security services offer a proactive, outsourced model, relieving your organization of the overhead of staffing internal cybersecurity teams and the regular upkeep of internally managed systems. With a managed security services provider (MSSP), mid-market firms can:
- Monitor threats 24/7/365 and stay on top of emerging cyber instances
- Deliver compliance-ready security, helping meet industry regulations
- Tap into expertise on demand, avoiding the cost of hiring full-time cybersecurity staff
- Provide expert knowledge of and mastery in the latest security tools, technologies, trends, and techniques
Partnering with an MSSP is a powerful, affordable cybersecurity solution that provides mid-market enterprises the ability to scale their cybersecurity at a fraction of the cost, but with the speed of Fortune 500-size teams.
Your Cybersecurity Solution: At Netrio, We’ve Got This
At Netrio, we’re acutely aware of the challenges and risks facing mid-market enterprises. That’s why we offer a suite of cybersecurity managed services to help you secure your environment, defend proactively, and future-proof indefinitely.
When it comes to your cyber environment, at Netrio, We’ve Got This. Interested in learning more about our managed cybersecurity services? Contact us today.
