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If you’re a UK SMB, chances are you’ve looked at cyber security costs and thought, “Why does this stuff cost so much?” If so, you’re in good company. Between the acronyms, vendors, and insurance tick-boxes, it can feel impossible to know what’s essential, what’s optional, and what’s a waste of money.
Over the years I’ve spent helping businesses improve their cyber security posture, I can tell you that smaller businesses often have a more reactive approach. They buy tools to pass compliance checks or meet insurance requirements, but those tools aren’t always the right fit. It’s what I call the “all the gear, no idea” problem: spending on the wrong protection and assuming you’re covered when you’re not.
In this article, we’ll unpack what cyber security really costs for SMBs compared to enterprises, what drives those costs, and how you can build a right-sized, effective strategy that keeps you safe without overspending.
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What This Blog Covers:
- Why Cyber Security Costs Seem So Complicated — and How to Simplify Them
- Breaking Down Cyber Security Spend: The Key Cost Drivers
- The Real Bill Arrives After the Breach
- Spending Smart: A Right-Sized Priority Plan
- Winning the Budget Battle with Real Numbers
- More Tech, More Risk: What’s Changing in Cyber Security
- Getting Cyber Security Right — Without Overspending
Why Cyber Security Costs Seem So Complicated — and How to Simplify Them
The TickBox Trap
Many SMBs buy cyber tools reactively, like when a customer asks for a Cyber Essentials badge or an insurer insists on having Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) in place. That’s a start, but it’s not a strategy. True security begins with understanding your risk, not just checking a compliance box. After all, you can pass Cyber Essentials and still be wide open to attacks.
Don’t Buy on Price Alone
I know it may be tempting to go for the lowest quote, but doing so can leave big security gaps. On the other hand, you can’t just chuck some money at cyber security by getting all the bells and whistles. You can still have all the “best-of-breed” enterprise gear, but no idea of how to integrate or monitor the solutions you’re investing in. The sweet spot is focusing more on finding tools with strong integration that work succinctly with one another without blowing your budget.
Integration Beats Multiplication
There is an increasing number of modern Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) platforms that include features like Domain Name System (DNS) and web filtering. If your organisation is fully remote and only needs to protect its endpoints rather than office networks, a separate security tool may be unnecessary. Integration saves cost and complexity, which is a crucial point to consider if you have an SMB with a lean IT team.
Breaking Down Cyber Security Spend: The Key Cost Drivers
When someone asks me, “So what does cyber security cost?” the honest answer is that your cyber security budget depends on how valuable the data is to your company. What would the cost be if your data was stolen, held to ransom, or sold on the black market? Let’s break down where the money actually goes — and how SMBs can spend smarter:
Tools & Software Licences
For SMBs (around 100 seats), annual cyber spend typically sits between £10k–£50k, covering essentials like endpoint protection, email security, web filtering, MFA, and backups. The biggest differentiator here is that SMBs often overpay by buying overlapping tools, while enterprises drive value through consolidation and configuration.
Check out this article to learn how to assess and balance your tech stack to avoid overspending on security tools.
People & Operations
Enterprises don’t just spend more on licences — they invest heavily in people and processes. Large organisations can afford dedicated teams of analysts, engineers, and compliance specialists who manage their environments around the clock.
Most SMBs, however, don’t have the purse to be able to cover the manpower for round-the-clock management. That's where partnering with a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider comes in. An MDR's main focus is to actively hunt for threats, monitor your attack surface, and respond fast if a bad actor does get in. It is imperative to find the correct MDR provider that integrates well with your existing security stack so the MDR provider can do their job effectively.
Compliance & Insurance
While cyber insurance isn’t a universal requirement in the UK just yet, it’s becoming a key driver of spend. In fact, many of our customers have already come to us asking for assessments because they “don’t want to be the next one in the news.” Insurance used to be an afterthought. Now, it’s often what drives investment: you can’t even get a policy without basic controls in place.
Recovery & Resilience
Backups, disaster recovery, and incident response readiness are often where the real costs of resilience sit. According to the UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, medium-sized businesses (50–249 employees) report an average breach cost of £10,830, while larger organisations see that figure rise to £31,100. Most of this cost comes from recovery, downtime, and business disruption rather than the initial breach itself.
For a 100-seat organisation, this gives a realistic sense of the potential impact — and a clear reason to invest in robust recovery capabilities. Testing recovery plans twice a year and maintaining reliable, off-site backups can dramatically reduce downtime, making it one of the most cost-effective investments an SMB can make.
Training & Culture
For the average 100-user organisation, you can expect to pay around £2k–£5k per year for employee awareness training. Now, that may sound like a lot, but it pays off fast. Frequent micro-learning sessions and phishing simulations create a strong “human firewall”. Training works like sport: I play rugby, and if I only trained once a year, I’d be a poor player. Two sessions a week, every week, and I improve. The same goes for user behaviour.
The Real Bill Arrives After the Breach
Imagine living in a house with no locks. Someone walks in and opens the bedside drawer where the jewellery lives — except in business, that “jewellery” is your data. If it’s encrypted and held to ransom, there’s the immediate cost (which doesn’t guarantee you’ll get it back). But then there’s the long tail: reputational damage, lost sales, weeks or months of operational mess, comms costs, and regulatory headaches.
The true price of weak cyber hygiene is often invisible until it’s too late:
- Downtime: For a business turning over £10m, a single day of downtime could easily cost £40k–£60k in lost productivity.
- Reputational Damage: Publicised breaches can result in many opportunity losses, like stalled deals, trigger client loss, and delay new sales.
- Legal & Forensics: External forensics, legal counsel, and PR support can add tens of thousands in unexpected post-incident costs.
- Insurance Excess: The right stack can reduce premiums or make coverage attainable, but weak controls may increase premiums or limit payouts.
I call this the “iceberg effect”: the visible cost (tools) is small compared to what’s beneath the surface (downtime, damage, disruption). Put differently, you might spend £25k a year for four years — that’s £100k. One incident can cost that in a week. Which feels more expensive now?
Spending Smart: A Right-Sized Priority Plan
Before we go any further, ask: where are we exposed to the internet? This includes endpoints, mobiles, email, cloud apps, and remote access. Protect any entry points into the business first.
Here’s how SMBs can build effective protection without overspending:
1. Start with Risk, Not Tools.
Begin by mapping your attack surface — devices, email, cloud storage, hybrid networks. Identify your critical data and who has access to it.
2. Layer the Basics.
- Endpoint protection/EDR
- Web filtering (which can be included in a strong endpoint protection tool if you feel necessary)
- Email security scanning inbound and internal traffic
- MFA and access controls
- Reliable, tested backups with offsite redundancy
- Mobile and USB device management
3. Invest in the Human Firewall.
Run monthly phishing simulations and quick training nudges to build habits, not just awareness.
4. Leverage an MSP.
A good MSP brings senior cyber expertise, integrated tool management, and 24/7 monitoring. They’re effectively an outsourced security team for a fraction of the enterprise cost.
Winning the Budget Battle with Real Numbers
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. To justify your cyber spend, focus on measurable improvements and risk reduction.
Here are a few that resonate with boards and insurers:
- Human risk: Phishing simulation failure rate trending down; completion of microlearning.
- Coverage & hygiene: % of users on MFA; EDR coverage across devices; patching latency; USB lockdown in place.
- Resilience: Restore success rate; time to restore vs RPO/RTO targets.
- Operational reality: Incidents contained out of hours (MDR/SOC), and evidence that tools are being managed and reported on — proving that vulnerabilities aren’t lingering.
When you tie spend to the financial impact – like lower insurance premiums, prevented downtime, or avoided legal costs – budget conversations get much easier.
More Tech, More Risk: What’s Changing in Cyber Security
AI is levelling the playing field — for both sides. Attackers are automating phishing and credential stuffing, while defenders are using AI to spot behavioural anomalies and insider threats faster. Five to ten years ago, a machine might test thousands of stolen credentials per second. Now, attackers use AI to test millions and craft messages that pull you off email to WhatsApp/SMS, where your filters can’t help.
Cloud-based services and hybrid work have shifted priorities, too. Internal traffic and lateral movement are now the biggest blind spots for SMBs. Investing in visibility and integration matters more than ever. This means:
- Email tools must scan internal traffic, not just inbound.
- Detection must consider language and behaviour, not just known bad links.
- Users need ongoing awareness so “something feels off” triggers a second check.
But remember: more tools don’t mean better protection. Be continuously curious about the features you already own. Are you using them properly? What’s still switched off? That curiosity is where most SMBs find the biggest leaps in protection without bigger invoices.
Getting Cyber Security Right — Without Overspending
You don’t need enterprise-level budgets or a sky-high tech stack to be secure. You need right-sized protection, well-configured tools, and a culture of awareness.
The true cost isn’t the software or the MSP retainer. It’s the downtime, lost trust, and reputational damage when things go wrong.
As a Customer Success Manager, my job is to help SMBs spend where it matters, get the most from what they already own, and sleep better at night. If you’re unsure whether your current spend is protecting you properly, it might be time for a second opinion.
Book a cyber security assessment with Babble. We’ll review your current stack and spend, highlight cost inefficiencies and risk gaps, and give you a right-sized plan tailored to your business and sector.
