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With widespread attacks and vulnerabilities leaving organisations unwittingly vulnerable , they need to ensure they have baseline cyberresiliency and are fully aware of what ’ s in their environment . Ed Williams , EMEA Director of Trustwave SpiderLabs , discusses how SMEs across all industries can ensure better security posture through vulnerability management and addressing the basics .

What are the biggest security threats facing SMEs currently ?

No matter the size of the business , the biggest threat out there right now is ransomware . There are specific groups or types of ransomware that target particular industries or businesses but generally it is agnostic so targets any type of organisation in any industry .

As a consequence , if you have something sitting on the Internet that is vulnerable , it ’ s going to get caught up in an attack and exploited , and attackers will be able to move laterally through the network with ease , causing even more disruption .

Although the impact of ransomware can be huge , it can get into a network in the simplest of ways , the most common being missed patches , poor password management , or some sort of email compromise , be that phishing or weak passwords .

For SMEs , phishing attacks are likely to be more successful and have a larger impact than they are for larger enterprises . Employees at smaller businesses often wear a number of hats , have shared workloads and probably more access rights than those in a larger enterprise with a more specific role . Through no fault of their own , SMEs are slightly easier to compromise due to the blurred lines between job roles and those employees with any admin responsibilities are a prime target .

Supply chain attacks are also very relevant in the SME space . Smaller businesses have less buying power than larger enterprises so it ’ s likely they have less control of and visibility into the security of their supply chain and are therefore at more risk .

NO MATTER THE SIZE OF THE BUSINESS , THE BIGGEST THREAT OUT THERE RIGHT NOW IS RANSOMWARE .