If you asked most business owners in Central New York about small business cybersecurity, the answer is usually the same:
“Why would anyone bother with us?”
No sensitive government data.
No massive customer database.
No global brand.
Just a small team, a few laptops, and a business to run.
That belief is exactly why small businesses are one of the most common targets for cyberattacks today.
This idea made sense 15 or 20 years ago, when attacks were manual and targeted. Today, it’s outdated.
Modern cyberattacks are:
Automated
Indiscriminate
Cheap to launch
Scaled across thousands of businesses at once
Attackers are not researching your company or deciding whether you’re “important enough.” They’re scanning the internet and email systems for easy entry points.
If the door is unlocked, they walk in.
From an attacker’s perspective, small organizations often have:
Fewer security controls
Older or poorly configured systems
Less employee training
No dedicated security staff
A stronger likelihood of paying to “make it go away”
That combination makes small businesses lower effort and higher return.
It’s not personal. It’s math.
This is one of the most dangerous assumptions we hear.
Most cyber incidents don’t start with a dramatic ransomware screen. They start quietly:
A compromised email inbox
A fake invoice that looks real
A login reused from another breach
A forwarded phishing message that someone clicked once
Many businesses don’t realize they’ve been compromised until:
Money is missing
Clients receive suspicious emails
Insurance gets involved
Systems are suddenly unavailable
By then, you’re reacting instead of preventing.
Cybercrime isn’t a “big city” problem.
Small professional firms, nonprofits, and service organizations across Central New York are dealing with:
Email account takeovers
Bank fraud attempts
Ransomware downtime
Insurance carriers demanding proof of security controls
Most of them thought they were too small, too local, or too uninteresting to be a target.
They were wrong.
Another common misconception is that having antivirus software or backups means you’re covered.
Those are tools, not answers.
They don’t tell you:
Where your real vulnerabilities are
Which systems matter most to your business
How an attacker would actually get in
Whether your setup would satisfy insurance or regulatory scrutiny
Without clarity, you’re guessing. And guessing is expensive.
There’s a simple truth most vendors won’t tell you:
You cannot protect what you haven’t assessed.
A cybersecurity risk assessment doesn’t try to scare you or sell you tools. It answers basic, business-critical questions:
Where are we most exposed?
What would cause the most damage if it failed?
What matters now vs. later?
What risks are real, and which ones aren’t worth worrying about?
For many small businesses, the results are eye-opening. For some, they’re reassuring. Either way, you’re no longer operating on assumptions.
Small businesses in Central New York do get hacked. Often quietly. Sometimes catastrophically.
The difference between the companies that recover smoothly and the ones that don’t usually comes down to one thing:
They knew their risks before someone else exploited them.
If you’re not sure where your business stands, a cybersecurity risk assessment is the most practical first step you can take. It replaces uncertainty with clarity and gives you a path forward that actually fits your organization.
If you want to understand your real exposure, not just hope for the best, start there.