Security Outcomes Study: SMB Edition

The cybersecurity industry has a bad habit of assuming bigger means better, but good things often come in small packages. This supplemental report focuses on the experiences of over 850 IT and security professionals from small and midsize businesses (SMBs). It challenges the notion that limited resources prevent successful outcomes, proving instead that SMBs can often teach larger enterprises a thing or two about effective security.

The data reveals a startling win for the smaller players: SMB teams are actually more successful than their larger counterparts in ensuring that security keeps up with the demands of the business. This is likely due to the “less red tape” and closer relationship between IT and business leaders common in smaller firms. This report rewards the click by identifying the specific “success factors”—like modernizing technology and preparing for disaster recovery—that provide the highest ROI for SMB budgets.

Ultimately, focus and resilience are the primary drivers of SMB success. Small businesses with a sound strategy are significantly more likely to report positive outcomes, and that strategy is comparatively more important for them than for larger firms. This study provides a “choose your own adventure” roadmap for SMBs to customize their security planning based on their specific organizational goals.

Key Findings

• Agility Advantage: 44% of SMBs report security successfully keeps up with the business, outperforming both large (42%) and enterprise (42%) segments.
• The Resilience Differentiator: Prompt disaster recovery capabilities offer a 13.4% boost to success likelihood—the single largest differentiator for SMBs.
• Modernization ROI: SMBs maintaining a modern tech stack achieved higher success rates in every single one of the 11 security outcomes measured.
• Compliance Success: Meeting compliance regulations is the outcome where organizations report the highest success rate (47%), driven largely by budget and collaboration.
• Strategy as a Force Multiplier: Having a sound security strategy results in an 8.4% lift in success rates for SMBs, a higher impact than seen in larger firms.
• Incident Response Impact: Mature IR capabilities are the top differentiator for managing top risks and avoiding major incidents in small firms.