Updated on: June 4, 2026
Cybersecurity threats are becoming more frequent, more sophisticated, and more expensive for businesses of all sizes. From ransomware attacks to credential theft and internal misconfigurations, the reality is that many breaches don’t happen because of advanced hacking techniques, but because of simple, overlooked security gaps that remain unaddressed.
To better understand where businesses should focus their attention, SafetyDetectives asked cybersecurity experts a simple question: What is the most important security tip or practice every business owner should follow?
Their answers consistently point away from complex, expensive solutions and toward foundational security habits that are often ignored in day-to-day operations. From access control and account hygiene to backups and basic security discipline, the experts highlight practical steps that significantly reduce risk when applied consistently.
Below, cybersecurity professionals share their key recommendations, and why these fundamentals remain some of the most powerful defenses any business can implement.
What is the single best way to reduce the risk of ransomware attacks?
The single best way to reduce the damage from ransomware is to maintain tested, secure backups.
Ransomware locks your files and demands money to restore access. But when a business has clean backups, it can recover without depending on the attacker. Backups should be automatic, stored safely, and separated from the main system. A backup that ransomware can also encrypt is not very useful.
It is also important to test backups regularly. Many businesses only discover their backups are broken when they actually need them.
Of course, backups should be combined with MFA, employee awareness, and software updates. But if we choose one strongest defense against ransomware damage, it is this: have reliable backups before an attack happens, not after.
Vasantheeswaran R, Incident Response at Zoho
What is one cybersecurity mistake that is easiest to fix but often overlooked?
One of the most common and easily preventable cybersecurity mistakes is failing to enable Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) on business accounts. Many organizations still rely solely on passwords, even though compromised credentials remain one of the leading causes of security breaches. Enabling MFA adds an extra layer of protection and can significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access with minimal cost and effort.
Yaya Waliyudini, Founder & CEO of Nexbyt Technology
What is the one thing business owners should check regularly to avoid security breaches?
The one most important thing business owners should check regularly is their user access and administrative privileges. This practice is not just a recommendation; it is the fundamental cornerstone of implementing the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). PoLP dictates that every user, program, or process should be granted only the essential permissions needed to perform its required task—and nothing more. This systematic approach forms a critical layer in a strong defense-in-depth security strategy.
Statistics consistently show that a significant percentage of internal and external data breaches involve privilege misuse or misconfiguration. This vulnerability often arises when business owners onboard new staff, integrate third-party services, or collaborate with external contractors. In the rush of daily operations, roles are assigned that unintentionally grant excessive power, frequently culminating in unnecessary Administrator rights across core systems.
If an account possessing broad, high-level permissions is compromised—whether through a phishing attack, weak password, or a zero-day exploit—or simply misused accidentally by a fatigued employee, the resulting damage is vastly amplified. The potential for large-scale data theft, catastrophic system damage, or a major regulatory breach increases dramatically when lateral movement across the network is unchecked by granular access controls.
Therefore, establishing a routine of regularly checking and auditing all user accounts is non-negotiable. This process ensures that every employee, contractor, or automated service operates with the absolute minimum access required to perform their specific duties, thereby drastically reducing the organization’s overall attack surface.
Key components of this essential security audit include:
- Systematic Role Review: Reviewing user roles and permission levels within all critical content management systems, enterprise applications, and cloud environments to ensure no one holds unnecessary, high-level permissions or accumulated legacy access from past roles.
- Proactive Onboarding and Off-boarding: Establishing and strictly following protocols for the immediate and systematic revocation of access for temporary users, contractors, or former employees the moment their duties conclude.
- Segregation of Duties: Confirming that administrative privileges are strictly limited and segregated among essential IT and security staff, and that all standard employee accounts are never granted elevated rights. Furthermore, implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all accounts, especially those with privileged access, to provide an extra layer of protection against credential compromise.
By meticulously limiting access to only what is vital to each role and function, business owners significantly reduce the risk of both internal human error and external malicious compromise. This single, proactive, and regular check on privilege management is the foundational element required to prevent small, common security lapses from escalating into devastating and costly major security breaches.
Irumva Yves Ngabonziza, Chief Engineer at ITS Ltd – itsltd.online
If you had to eliminate one common security weakness found in most companies, what would it be?
The unglamorous answer: people having access to far more than they need to do their job. Every CEO wants to talk about ransomware and AI-powered attacks. Meanwhile, half the company can open the shared drive where someone saved the payroll spreadsheet two years ago.
Here’s the pattern I see again and again. Someone’s credentials get compromised. A dodgy link, a reused password, a leak from a service they signed up to in 2019. On its own, that’s a manageable incident. The damage comes from what that account can touch. The attacker logs in, has a poke around, and discovers they’ve effectively been handed a master key: finance, customer records, shared drives full of contracts, an old admin panel nobody remembered existed. A small problem becomes a very bad week, and sometimes a very bad year.
The fix isn’t expensive or clever. Access should match the job, and only the job. When someone changes roles, the old access comes off. When someone leaves, it’s gone the same day, not next quarter when someone gets around to it. Every few months, a human being needs to actually look at who can reach what and ask whether it still makes sense. Pair that with multi-factor authentication on everything, and you’ve taken most of the teeth out of an attack before it starts.
At Affinity MSP, this is the first thing we look at when a new client comes on board, and it’s almost always the quickest win. The question I’d put to any business owner is this: if one of our team members had their account compromised tomorrow, what could someone reach with it? If the honest answer makes you wince, that’s your starting point. You don’t need a bigger budget. You need a tidy-up.
Nick Ower, Founder & CEO of Affinity MSP
What is the most practical way for non-technical business owners to improve their security quickly?
The most practical way is to focus on simple security basics that block common attacks. Start with multi-factor authentication, a password manager, software updates, and regular backups.
Business owners do not need to understand complex cybersecurity tools to begin. They should first protect the accounts that matter most, such as email, banking, cloud storage, website admin panels, and social media. Turning on MFA adds an extra layer of protection even if a password is stolen.
Next, use a password manager so every account has a strong and unique password. Also, keep devices, apps, plugins, and business software updated. Many attacks happen because old software is left unpatched.
In simple words, start with the basics and make them consistent. Good security is not about doing everything at once. It is about closing the easiest doors attackers use.
Cyber Edition – thecyberedition.com
What is the most impactful first step a small business should take to improve its cybersecurity posture?
For small businesses in the region, the most effective first step is not to purchase individual security products, but to decide where and how to deploy the infrastructure. Everything else depends on this choice: resilience, recovery from attacks, and regulatory compliance.
The reality is this: it is practically impossible for an SMB to build a comprehensive cybersecurity framework in-house. This would require your own server room, a team of administrators, individual information security specialists, round-the-clock monitoring, and security licenses. For a company of 30-100 people, such costs are not economically justified, and most importantly, they do not deliver the necessary quality. Cyberattacks today occur 24/7 and are highly automated, while small businesses often have only one or two IT specialists to manage their security.
Therefore, the practical first step is to migrate production systems to an enterprise-grade cloud provider and consume security services as a service. The minimum required set typically includes the following: backups with mandatory immutable storage are the only working protection against ransomware today as attackers usually target backups first. The next layer is MFA on all privileged and remote access, account management, and basic password hygiene. It is not expensive and can stop most of the mass attacks.
A separate use case involves functions that require 24/7 operation, such as incident monitoring, analysis of attacks on web applications, and DDoS filtering. It is not economically viable to maintain your own shift in a company for 50 people. The working model for SMB is to take SOC, WAF, and Anti-DDoS as a managed service from a provider and focus internal resources on product-related tasks.
The key point is that all these functions must be interconnected and work as a single service under the provider’s SLA. This gives the business a clear area of responsibility that it can actually control, and a reliable partner who takes care of the rest.
Nikolai Lushnikov, Branch director at ITGLOBAL.COM
What AI‑driven cybersecurity threat should business owners be paying the most attention to right now?
AI‑powered social engineering has become the most dangerous and underestimated threat facing businesses today. What used to be easy‑to‑spot phishing attempts have evolved into highly convincing, context‑aware attacks generated by large language models that can mimic writing styles, reference real internal information, and adapt instantly to a target’s behaviour. These attacks no longer look like “spam” —-they look like a message from your CFO, a supplier, or even a colleague asking for a quick favour.
The real risk is scale. Attackers can now generate thousands of personalised messages in seconds, each tailored to bypass human intuition and traditional security filters. This means the weakest point in a company’s defences is no longer its infrastructure – it’s the moment an employee receives a message that feels legitimate enough to trust.
Business owners need to recognise that AI has shifted the threat landscape from broad, generic attacks to precision‑crafted psychological manipulation. The most effective defence is a combination of real‑time message analysis, automated threat scoring, and continuous user awareness – tools that can keep up with the speed and sophistication of AI‑generated attacks.
This is exactly why we built Excelitte. Our platform includes an AI Phishing Message Scanner, an AI Robotic Penetration Tester, and a new Browser Extension that automatically scans every URL and file a user interacts with. It gives businesses an always‑on, AI‑powered safety layer designed for the threats of today – not the threats of five years ago.
Trevor Dominic, Application Support Lead & Solutions Architect at Temsconsu
What is the best defence against ransomware attacks?
When organizations discuss ransomware protection, the conversation often revolves around firewalls, antivirus solutions, artificial intelligence, and the latest cybersecurity tools. While these technologies are important, they miss a fundamental truth:
The single best defence against ransomware is not technology—it’s preparedness. Ransomware succeeds because organizations assume they won’t be the next victim. Cybercriminals understand this mind-set and exploit gaps in planning, governance, and response readiness rather than merely technical vulnerabilities.
An organization can have world-class security tools and still fall victim to a phishing email, a compromised credential, or a software vulnerability. What separates resilient organizations from the rest is their ability to continue operating when prevention fails. Preparedness means knowing what data is critical, maintaining tested backup and recovery processes, establishing incident response procedures, defining decision-making authority, and regularly conducting cyber crisis simulations. It means ensuring that employees, leadership teams, IT departments, legal advisors, and insurers know exactly what to do during the first few hours of an attack.
The reality is that ransomware is no longer just a technology problem; it is a business continuity risk. Organizations that focus solely on preventing attacks often overlook their ability to recover from them. In cyber risk management, success should not be measured by the absence of incidents but by the ability to withstand and recover from them. The most resilient organizations understand that while technology can reduce risk, preparedness determines survival. The question is no longer, “Can we prevent ransomware?” The real question is, “How quickly can we recover when it happens?”
Dr K. Madhavan, Principal Consultant at RYSKMEN Cyber Consulting Services