Cybersecurity for SMEs: a danger that is all too often overlooked
Cybersecurity for SMEs: a danger that is all too often overlooked
Publish Date: 2026-06-01 18:07:00
Source Domain: visionarymarketing.com
Hervé Kabla, with whom I co-authored several books, has just published a book on cybersecurity for SMEs. The CEO’s Cybersecurity Playbook tackles a subject that many small business leaders still prefer to ignore. Not out of bad faith, but out of a stubborn conviction: that they are too small to be of interest to anyone. That conviction is precisely what makes them such attractive targets. I invited Hervé to talk about the book on camera at the Visionary Marketing studio.
SME Cybersecurity: The Ominous Threat They’d All Rather Ignore
The SME: the Ideal Target for Cyber Attacks
The book opens with an observation that might seem blunt — were the reality not even harsher than the words.
“They have become, in just a few years, the preferred target of cybercriminals, precisely because they are fast, trusted, and often under protected.”
The CEO’s Cybersecurity Playbook, p. 9
The transcript of Hervé’s talk confirms the diagnosis with equal candour: SMEs invest neither the technical means nor the awareness efforts required, and cyber attackers “know this only too well.”
What has changed is the nature of the attack itself. For a long time, cybercrime relied on manual targeting and deliberate intent. Today, attackers run automated sweeps of the internet on a massive scale, scanning for open vulnerabilities.
“In the digital age, opportunity replaces intent.”
The CEO’s Cybersecurity Playbook, p. 19
Nobody is singling you out. You are simply exposed, and that is enough.
Three Budget Lines, a Few Tens of Thousands of Euros
One of the questions SME leaders ask most often is also the simplest: what does it cost? Hervé’s answer is precise. A cybersecurity budget for an SME amounts to “around a few tens of thousands of euros” and breaks down into three areas: technical solutions (software and hardware), an appropriate cyber insurance policy, and staff training and awareness. This trio is consistent with what the book develops at length: the technical…
