Technology is providing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) of all industries a tremendous opportunity to grow and better manage their business. With the click of a button, today's SMBs can instantly access a national audience, efficiently source materials globally and leverage tools that were previously only accessible to large enterprises. Thanks to the emergence of the technology-enabled gig economy, SMBs can also affordably and effortlessly augment their workforce, with recent research indicating 50 percent of U.S.-based SMBs are currently employing freelancers. But as beneficial as technology is to SMBs, it also presents a significant source of risk. In fact, the very same technologies that enable admirable agility and rapid growth can serve as the source of an SMB's ultimate demise.

Cybercrime has emerged as an unfortunate yet inevitable part of doing business today. Nearly every week another large, global enterprise is breached, and SMBs are proving to be highly vulnerable, as they don't have the dedicated resources that larger companies have and often lack sufficient cybersecurity training. Additionally, while they may not generate massive payouts individually, SMBs' general lack of cybersecurity sophistication allows hackers to take a "spray and pray" approach, attacking SMBs by the thousands, or even millions, with little time or investment required. Worse yet, it's exceptionally difficult for SMBs to resume business as usual if they are attacked, with the U.S. National Cyber Security Alliance finding 60 percent of small companies are unable to sustain their business over six months after a cyberattack.  

To read the full article, head over to Security Today.