With most companies and organizations nowadays integrating a large variety of digital systems and tools into their operations, and technology evolving at breakneck speed, cyberattacks have become a frequent occurrence in the business landscape. Statistics reveal the scale of the phenomenon, showing that cyberattacks, in their many forms, affect an ever-growing number of businesses every year. In 2023, ransomware attacks reached a record level, impacting over 72% of businesses worldwide, while 43% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) report having experienced at least one cyberattack over the past year. Furthermore, these incidents are estimated to cost businesses over $10 trillion in 2025.
There’s no denying that cybersecurity risks are rising, and no one is truly safe: individuals, small companies, and corporations are all potential targets. Cybercriminals are always on the lookout, searching and waiting for even the tiniest weakness that they can exploit. The methods they use to put their nefarious plans into practice and achieve their goals are also becoming increasingly sophisticated, making it much harder for security teams to keep up and protect against these dangers. No matter how fast cybersecurity measures advance, threats always seem to evolve faster.
Closing the gaps
Given the current situation, the importance of setting up strong defenses cannot be stressed enough. However, despite business owners and managers being aware of the existing risks, many companies still have notable gaps in their security systems. Left unchecked, these gaps can turn into major issues in no time, often resulting in downtime, stolen data, financial loss, and damaged reputation. Just because a company has managed to dodge attacks so far doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have any blind spots. Sometimes, it means they just got lucky, and it’s only a matter of time until that luck runs out.
Therefore, it’s crucial for businesses to know where their weaknesses are and patch them rapidly, before bad actors can take advantage. Awareness can help companies take protective measures and thus prevent attacks from disrupting their activities or causing irreparable damage. So, let’s take a look at the most common cybersecurity deficiencies found in businesses nowadays and what needs to be done to address them.
Incomplete asset records
Do you know exactly how many tech products and solutions your company employs and how each of them is secured? A lot of businesses don’t have a complete inventory of their IT assets, meaning they may have software, services, and systems that don’t have any kind of protection in place. This usually happens when enterprises use outdated inventory methods like spreadsheets that simply can’t keep up with the constant evolution of their tech stack and networks. Some of the new additions will inevitably fall short on security controls and turn into weak spots, creating huge security discrepancies across the organization.
Sometimes, tools and services that the company doesn’t use anymore are simply forgotten, no longer being included in the security plan, but they remain part of the infrastructure and can still provide an entry point for cybercriminals, further expanding the attack surface. Asset inventory should be a priority to ensure that every single component is regularly assessed and properly protected.
Misconfigured cloud infrastructure
These days, many companies rely on cloud services to run their daily operations, due to the convenience and cost savings they provide. However, not all of them know how to properly configure these services to ensure adequate security levels. Some businesses use a variety of interconnected cloud-based solutions from different providers, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, which makes the configuration process all the more complicated.
Inappropriate cloud setups can look like publicly accessible storage, unencrypted data, excessive permissions, exposed access keys, default credentials, or unsecured endpoints. All these settings can pose serious security issues, creating opportunities for unauthorized access to company networks and all the sensitive data they contain. Companies should therefore audit the configurations of their cloud systems frequently and check if they align with their security protocols and standards.
Inadequate identity and access management practices
Businesses should maintain strict control over who can access various components and areas of their tech IT infrastructure and ensure proper management of that access. Unfortunately, many fail to prioritize this critical aspect of security, using very weak passwords that are reused for multiple accounts, ignoring multi-factor authentication (MFA), and having poor management of overprivileged accounts.
This obviously enhances the risk of data breaches, credential misuse, and compliance failures. To prevent these issues from impacting your organization, you should focus on strengthening your credentials management and consider using an enterprise password manager that can provide improved security through strong encryption, centralized control, and the ability to enforce password policies.
Poor backup and disaster recovery planning
Every company should have reliable backup and recovery solutions in place in case something goes wrong and their data is lost or affected in any way. And yet, way too many businesses take this task too lightly and forget to revise their backup and recovery plans. Then, when a crisis strikes, they realize that their backups are either outdated or inaccessible, leaving them unable to recover critical data.
The most common issues in this regard are related to locally stored backups, the lack of automated backup schedules, and recovery plans that are incompatible with current systems and requirements.
Lack of employee security awareness training
Although human error is constantly ranked as a top cybersecurity risk, some organizations still fail to give employees cybersecurity training the importance it deserves, and even skip this crucial step altogether. When team members don’t have the skills and knowledge to protect against potential threats and handle company systems safely, mistakes are bound to happen.
This highlights the necessity of investing in employee training and making sure all personnel know what actions to take to maintain security and respond appropriately when issues arise.
