As we enter the second quarter of 2026, the threat landscape for the SME sector resembles a minefield where the mines themselves can look for a target. According to the latest ENISA Threat Landscape report, cybercrime has undergone the ultimate metamorphosis: from guerrilla attacks to a fully professionalised Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) model. Nowadays, the aggressor does not need to be a brilliant programmer – all they need is a purchased subscription and AI algorithms that scan the network with surgical precision for the smallest cracks.
The statistics are merciless: as many as 43% of all cyber attacks target small and medium-sized companies directly. Most striking, however, is the distance between risk and preparedness – only 14% of businesses in this sector feel realistically prepared to fend off an incident.
This is because the notion that security is ‘an IT department problem’ is still being perpetuated. True security requires a radical paradigm shift: moving from protecting the devices themselves to protecting processes, identities and data flows. If you only protect the ‘boxes’, you are leaving the door open to the heart of your business.
Extended definition of endpoint
In the traditional security model that prevailed just a few years ago, the ‘endpoint’ was a static and easily defined concept – usually a laptop in an employee’s bag or a workstation connected to a company cable. However, in 2026, this framing is a dangerous oversimplification. Today’s endpoint is any piece of infrastructure with an IP address and access to data resources: from smart CCTV cameras and environmental sensors, to private smartphones (BYOD), to sophisticated printing and document digitisation systems.
It is the latter, often treated as ‘background devices’, that are becoming a favourite gateway for cybercriminals. The modern MFP is in reality a powerful computer with its own operating system, hard drive and direct access to the user directory. Poorly secured, it becomes the ideal launching point for a lateral movement attack. A hacker does not need to break into the best-protected server; all he needs to do is take control of the printer and, from within it, silently and methodically scan the internal network for vulnerabilities in other devices.
Understanding these dynamics requires decision-makers in the SME sector to abandon the ‘box protection’ mindset in favour of protecting the entire information flow cycle.
“In many SME companies, security is still mainly associated with the employee’s laptop and the antivirus installed on it. The problem is that today’s IT environment has long ceased to end with the PC. From our perspective, what is most often overlooked are those elements that “just run in the background” – network devices, servers, printers or access to cloud systems from private devices. A very often underestimated area is also the user accounts themselves – because today it is the identity, not the device, that is the main target of attack. The key change is that a cyber-attack no longer has to ‘enter via a virus’. A single hijacked account or employee inattention is enough. Therefore, classic antivirus, while still necessary, no longer provides the full picture. It protects a fragment of the environment, but does not show what is happening in the entire company ecosystem. And today, security is precisely the ability to combine all these elements into one coherent whole.” – says Roman Porechin, Business Development Manager at Sharp Systems Business Poland.
Zero Trust architecture as a foundation for SMEs
The traditional security model, based on building a ‘digital fortress’ and trusting everything inside the corporate network, has become an anachronism. It is worth noting that, at a time when distributed team-based and hybrid working models are becoming popular, the notion of a secure office perimeter no longer exists. A solution that has gone from the enterprise segment to ‘under the thatch’ of smaller companies is the Zero Trust architecture. Its foundation is a simple but relentless principle: ‘never trust, always verify’.
For the SME sector, implementing Zero Trust is a hard economic calculation. Citing data from IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach report, companies that have implemented this model save an average of USD 1.5 million on the impact of potential data leaks compared to organisations relying on legacy systems.
However, the biggest barrier to implementing rigorous policies in smaller companies is the fear of decreased efficiency. Decision makers fear that additional layers of verification will turn work into a constant battle with the system. And how are business systems designed to combine high levels of restriction with the fluidity and intuitiveness of working in a hybrid environment?
“At Sharp we take a very practical approach. We start by analysing the way the organisation works, rather than imposing ready-made security policies. We first identify the key processes and access to systems, and then build the policies in such a way that they are least impactful on the user. We place great emphasis on ensuring that the employee has access to exactly what they need – without excessive privileges, but also without unnecessary barriers. In practice, this means, among other things, using mechanisms that simplify work, such as single sign-on or a contextual approach to access. The system itself assesses whether a login is secure and when additional steps are required. In this way, security works ‘in the background’ and the user sees an orderly and predictable environment rather than additional complications. In many cases, customers even notice an improved user experience after implementation, because we eliminate access chaos and unnecessary infrastructure elements,” comments Roman Porechin, Sharp Systems Business Polska.
From the perspective of the modern SME, Zero Trust is therefore not just a ‘shield’, but an optimisation tool. Rather than building walls that make it difficult for employees themselves to move around, smart systems use contextual security. If an employee logs in from the office at 9am from a trusted laptop, the system will not harass them with ten levels of verification. However, if the same attempt is made at 3am from another continent, the barriers will be immediately raised.
Infrastructure management and the role of AI
The SME sector is facing a painful paradox: on the one hand, cyber threats have become more sophisticated than ever; on the other, the shortage of skilled IT staff has reached a critical level. Small and medium-sized companies can rarely afford to maintain their own 24/7 Security Operations Centre (SOC). In this reality, Managed Security Services, the outsourcing of security to specialised partners, has become the dominant model. It allows organisations to benefit from professional security without having to fight for scarce and expensive experts in the labour market.
Another pillar of modern defence is artificial intelligence, which has ceased to be a marketing buzzword and has become a necessity. Because attacks today are automated and driven by AI, defences must react at machine speed. Predictive systems do not wait for an incident to occur – they analyse billions of signals in real time, detecting anomalies in the behaviour of users or devices before these turn into real data leaks.
However, in this whole technological arms race, the most serious change has been in the philosophy of risk management itself. However, technology is only part of the success – the change in attitude of decision-makers is key.
“Until recently, the prevailing approach was ‘let’s protect ourselves so that nothing happens’. Today we know that this is not a realistic assumption. The focus has changed – from prevention alone to the ability to detect and respond quickly. Because, in practice, it is not a question of whether an incident happens, but when and how quickly it is noticed. The companies that do best do not necessarily have the most tools. Instead, they have a structured approach and know what to do when there is a problem. For SME companies with limited budgets, the key is to focus on the fundamentals:
– securing access to systems,
– regular updates,
– a working and tested backup.
Only on this can the next elements be built. The biggest mistake is to try to ‘buy security’ as a single solution. In practice, it’s always a process and it’s consistency in building it that makes the biggest difference.” – Roman Porechin, Business Development Manager at Sharp Systems Business Poland, concludes.
Security as a process
It is thus becoming clear that cyber security has ceased to be a purely ‘technical’ domain and has become a strategic foundation for any modern SME. The most important lesson from our analysis is simple: security is not a product that can be bought and forgotten about, but a process that needs to be managed on an ongoing basis. Predictions for the coming years point to a further escalation of attacks using deep machine learning, which will make the line between a genuine message and a phishing attempt almost invisible to the human eye.
