The Secure Practice guide to keeping your small business secure

If you run a small business, chances are you already protect what matters most: your people, your customers, and your reputation. 

Cybersecurity isn’t separate from that. It’s simply the same kind of care, applied to your digital tools and data. 

Most business owners know security is important, but it can feel like an endless list of technical tasks: firewalls, updates, backups, passwords. Add limited time and budget, and it’s easy to postpone it until “later.”  

But cybersecurity isn’t just an IT issue; it’s a business skill. 

Learning how to protect your digital assets is just like learning how to balance your books or manage your team—it takes awareness, a few good habits, and the right tools. You don’t need a large security department to start making a difference. 

This small business cyber security guide will help you focus on what matters most: 

• Understanding your biggest risks and values 

• Building awareness without creating fear 

• Protecting your data and communication 

• Responding confidently when something happens 

• Tracking progress over time 

By the end, you’ll see that effective cybersecurity isn’t about perfection, but about steady progress, trust, and shared responsibility. 

Small businesses are essential to digital security and equipped to lead 

Most headlines talk about cybersecurity from the perspective of big corporations, mentioning billion-dollar losses, global breaches, or sophisticated state-backed attacks. 

But the real foundation of digital safety lies elsewhere: in the everyday actions of small and medium-sized businesses. 

Think of the digital economy as a supply chain of trust: 

• When one small supplier is compromised, attackers can move upward to larger partners 

• When one business protects its systems and data, it prevents that chain reaction 

That’s why digital resilience starts small and scales fast. 

In Norway and across Europe, national preparedness exercises like Hele Norge Øver and Hele Danmark Øver are built on this principle: helping every organization, regardless of size, practice working together during an incident. 

The small-business advantage 

Smaller organizations face real barriers to cybersecurity: limited time, few dedicated security staff, and the assumption that “IT will take care of it.” 

At the same time, smaller businesses are uniquely equipped to turn those challenges into strengths. 

Smaller teams communicate faster, collaborate more easily, and adapt quickly. Those traits make it easier to build good security habits and keep awareness visible in daily work. 

At Secure Practice, we see this every day; small teams that learn quickly, share knowledge freely, and take genuine pride in protecting their customers and colleagues. 

This guide builds on that same idea: that security works best as a shared effort, where teamwork becomes protection and small, steady actions contribute to long-term resilience.

1. Understand what’s at stake 

Every business has something worth protecting: your client list, your internal files, your reputation for reliability. Protecting these things isn’t about preparing for every possible attack. It’s about knowing where your real risks lie. 

Cybersecurity for small businesses is really about creating clarity so everyone knows how to make good digital decisions. Start here: 

1. List what you value most: customer data, invoices, intellectual property—anything hard to replace or embarrassing to lose 

2. Map where that data lives: On laptops? In shared drives? In the cloud? 

3. Ask what would happen if it disappeared tomorrow: this simple thought exercise turns cybersecurity from an abstract concern into a concrete business priority. 

Think of it as protecting your office keys, only the doors are digital.

2. Build awareness, not anxiety 

Awareness training should make people feel capable. 

At Secure Practice, we’ve learned that people engage best when they understand why something matters to them. 

Our gamified e-learning portal is built to start conversations instead of sending warnings, explore what led to mistakes instead of assigning blame, and adapt messages to people’s roles and experience. 

The 2025 SANS report shows that real behavior change takes 3–5 years, and building a stronger security culture can take up to 10. That type of progress comes from consistency, not campaigns. 

Try these simple habits:

Add short reminders to regular meetings 

Keep it light and conversational. A 2-minute “security check-in” works better than a lecture. Here are some examples of what you could share:  

• “How to spot a fake login page” — show a quick example and what gave it away 

• “What to do if your laptop gets lost” — who to notify and why speed matters 

• “When it’s okay to share files externally” — clarify which channels are approved 

Celebrate safe behavior the way you celebrate business wins 

Recognition helps people see security as part of success, not a separate rulebook.  

Celebrate instances of safe behavior from your colleagues, such as when: 

• An employee reports a suspicious email instead of ignoring it 

• A manager asks IT before connecting a new tool or plugin 

• A team updates shared documents securely rather than emailing attachments 

Thank people who report suspicious activity  

Close the feedback loop and build trust by following up with those who report and explaining what happened because of their action:  

• “Thanks for flagging that phishing email—it helped us block 15 others that came through.” 

• “Good catch on the login alert; it turned out to be a test, but your quick response showed the process works.” 

• “Appreciate you reporting the USB found in the office—IT checked it safely before disposal.”

3. Protect data and communication 

Strong cybersecurity grows from small, consistent habits that keep information safe and work running smoothly.

Make checking and reporting malicious or phishing emails easy. A one-click tool like MailRisk lets people flag suspicious emails safely while giving security teams useful insight.

Every click becomes a chance to learn, not to assign blame. 

For those in charge of security, automated filtering reduces noise and highlights real threats. Instead of reviewing tens of low-value messages, they can focus on incidents that truly matter.  

Over time, this two-way process builds trust.  

• People start checking emails and reporting phishing attempts earlier and more often, because they know it helps 

• Security teams see richer insights, and phishing awareness stops being a campaign and becomes part of how people work every day

4. Respond and recover with confidence 

Even with strong habits, incidents can happen. What matters most is how you respond when they do. 

A clear plan and a calm mindset can turn a stressful event into a learning moment. 

Plan before you need it 

You don’t need a long crisis manual, just a clear plan that anyone can follow. 

• Keep a short contact list for emergencies 

• Store backup access details safely offline 

• Decide how to communicate if main systems go down 

A plan that’s easy to find and understand helps everyone act quickly under pressure. 

Practice crisis response before it’s real

When a cyber incident hits, panic is often the real threat. Every minute counts, yet most small businesses never rehearse incident response—what they’d do if ransomware locked their systems or if a cyber criminal tricked one of their colleagues into sending money. 

Small teams rely on the hope that people will “figure it out.” But under pressure, communication breaks down and small mistakes can grow fast.  

The best time to learn isn’t during a crisis—it’s before one happens.

Our cybersecurity exercise platform, PrepJam, turns incident rehearsal into a hands-on experience. 

Instead of slides, participants receive simulated calls, emails, and alerts that evolve in real time—prompting real decisions and teamwork.

Everyone takes part: leaders, communications, and customer-facing teams alike. Even a 30-minute session can reveal gaps, spark discussion, and strengthen confidence, without heavy prep or disruption.

Restore and review 

After an incident or exercise, talk openly: What worked? What didn’t? What should change next time? Learning together builds trust and readiness and helps prevent repeat mistakes. 

Once recovery starts, check backups, reset access, and update affected systems. If customer data might be involved, communicate clearly and honestly. 

Every incident, real or simulated, strengthens your ability to respond faster next time.

5. Measure what matters

Data is most powerful when it helps people learn, not when it’s used to assign blame. 

When your team trusts that their input is used to improve the organization, they participate more and engage more deeply with security. 

That’s the idea behind Human risk metrics: measuring progress without compromising privacy. 

The system tracks knowledge and interest anonymously over time, showing overall trends that help you decide where to focus next. 

It even lets you share results with your team so you can celebrate small wins together and make security progress visible to everyone. 

This privacy-friendly approach helps you focus their efforts where they’ll have the most impact, while building trust with employees who know their results aren’t being used against them. 

Instead of reacting to mistakes, you can use data to guide learning and help teams grow their awareness in a way that fits their role and pace.

We’ve built a dashboard to help us monitor security maturity KPIs and security culture metrics are part of it. Human risk metrics help us break them down for each business area and prioritize our actions.

– Martha Eike, Security Culture, Awareness and Human Risk Management at Storebrand

The SMB Security Checklist 

If you want to put everything from this guide into action, we’ve created a one-page SMB Security Checklist that brings all the key steps together. 

It’s designed to help you review your security practices at a glance and share them easily across your team, without jargon or long explanations. 

You can use it to: 

• Identify what you’re already doing well and where to improve.

• Keep track of updates, training, and exercises throughout the year. 

• Turn awareness into consistent, practical habits. 

Print it out or save it to your shared drive. Check in with your team once a quarter—even ten minutes of review can make a big difference in keeping everyone aligned. 

Security is a business skill

Running a small business means wearing many hats, and “security expert” rarely feels like one of them. 

The good news is that cybersecurity doesn’t have to be complex. It’s simply part of running a responsible business, protecting what you’ve built and the people who rely on it. 

When you understand your risks, protect what matters most, and help your team feel confident online, you strengthen both trust and resilience—the same qualities that drive growth. 

Security is good business. Every habit, every report, and every open conversation adds up to a safer workplace and a stronger digital community. 

FAQs about small business cyber security