Small businesses are often underprotected from cyberattacks due to a lack of human and financial resources. Yet, they face some of the greatest consequences if threat actors succeed in a breach. It’s no surprise that the majority (60%) of small business owners consider cybersecurity a top priority, but less than a quarter are confident they are prepared to handle an attack.
One area that small businesses can focus on to reduce their risk: Mitigating software vulnerabilities in their networks. While small businesses often aim to reduce overhead costs and are hesitant to adopt new, expensive technology, they still rely on a complex system of software vendors to conduct business, which leaves them vulnerable to risk. Software vulnerabilities can significantly expand a small business’s attack surface and potential for exploitation. In fact, recent Coalition research identified that threat actors leveraged software vulnerabilities to launch ransomware attacks in a third of all cyber insurance claims last year.
Every month, cybercriminals leverage over 3,000 new vulnerabilities to gain access to third-party user networks and launch ransomware and other cyberattacks. In 2024 alone, over 40,000 software vulnerabilities were published in the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD), including those affecting some of the most widely relied upon business technology providers, such as Ivanti, Fortinet, Cisco, Microsoft, and Linux.
While staying ahead of vulnerabilities may seem daunting for small businesses, managing them is crucial for good cyber hygiene. The following are several key steps business owners and leaders can take to significantly reduce their risk.
4 Steps to Manage Software Vulnerabilities and Reduce Cyber Risk
1. Conduct a Comprehensive Risk Assessment
Understanding and minimizing your cyberattack surface directly reduces your security risk exposure. As part of a comprehensive risk assessment, small businesses should also take inventory of all the vendors they rely on and map them to critical business assets to confirm which vendors have access to sensitive data or systems.
Small businesses should also familiarize themselves with their vendors and conduct an audit to review their vendors’ security policies, certifications, compliance records, and best practices, because everyone is only as secure as their weakest vendor.
2. Prioritize Education
Cybersecurity processes and technologies are only part of protecting any organization’s network. For small businesses, in particular, ensuring that employees receive thorough cybersecurity training is crucial for effective defense strategies. Conducting regular training on topics such as phishing, password hygiene, and the latest social engineering techniques can ensure that all workers are up to date on best practices as threats evolve.
3. Establish Patch Management Best Practices
Patching all zero-days—the most recently discovered vulnerabilities—should also be a top priority. This means staying current with the latest disclosures and leveraging resources like the NVD. Identify the vulnerabilities that pose the greatest risk and define the systems and applications that must be included in the patching process.
Testing patches ahead of deployment ensures there are no hitches. Small businesses should test various software and hardware configurations to ensure they work correctly in different environments. In the event of any unexpected issues, small businesses should have a plan to revert to previous versions of the software, with appropriate data backups in place.
4. Don’t Consider Cybersecurity a Solo Effort
Just because a business may be small doesn’t mean its support system or cyber defenses have to follow suit.
Partnering with cybersecurity experts and leveraging their services can ease the burden of analyzing risks, preventing threat actors from exploiting weaknesses, and staying up-to-date on the latest threats, vulnerabilities, and cyber hygiene best practices. Managed detection and response (MDR), for example, enlists cybersecurity experts to monitor an organization’s devices and systems 24/7/265, as well as to quickly respond to and contain any new threats within their digital ecosystem.
Relying on cybersecurity experts can also help small businesses with Step 3 by alerting them to the most dangerous threats and prioritizing patching in a noisy cybersecurity ecosystem.
Small Businesses Deploying Smarter Cyber Strategies
By proactively addressing software vulnerabilities, small businesses will be better equipped to defend against evolving cyberattacks posed by the technology they rely on. Vulnerability management isn’t something you can set and forget; it’s a living and breathing practice.
Small businesses should continue to analyze their software risk surface for vulnerabilities on an ongoing basis to stay ahead of threat actors, allowing them to focus on what they do best: running their business.
Alok Ojha is Head of Products, Security, at Coalition, leading the strategic direction and implementation of the company’s security products, including External Attack Surface Monitoring, Managed Detection and Response, Security Awareness Training, and Coalition Control®, the company’s unified cyber risk management platform, helping to protect over 100,000 businesses.
Before Coalition, Alok served in product leadership roles at Productiv, Box (NYSE: BOX), Proofpoint (NASDAQ: PFPT), CloudPassage, EMC/Syncplicity (NYSE: DELL), RSA Security, and CA Technologies (NASDAQ: AVGO).
Photo courtesy Allison Saeng for Unsplash+