Protect your SME with a cyber security audit
As an SME owner or freelancer you may have thought at some point that your data is not at risk from cyber-attacks, that hackers will focus on multinational companies.
But this thought is far from reality, this confidence makes SMEs and freelancers a great attraction for cybercriminals, who are looking for less prepared companies or, with fewer resources. For this reason, in this post we will guide you through the steps to perform your own cybersecurity audit, read on!

Cybersecurity has become a necessity for SMEs and the self-employed. According to a report by Hiscox, only 61% of companies with less than 250 employees consider that they have a well-established cybersecurity system. What´s more, 60% of SMEs that suffer a serious cyber-attack close soon after, mainly due to financial damage, data loss and reputational damage. This brings us to the alarming reality that SMEs are an easy target for cyber-attacks.
Added to this picture is the growth of attacks over the last few years, with a 75% increase in 2024 compared to 2023. In addition, statistics point to an increase in incidents driven by artificial intelligence, such as ransomware, which continues to position itself as one of the main threats.
For these reasons, it is essential that your business has a solid cybersecurity plan in place. One of the main actions you can take is to carry out a cybersecurity audit to find out the state of your SME. Read on to find out the keys to this process.
What is a cybersecurity audit?
A cybersecurity audit is a series of actions and tests that will allow you to evaluate your SME's policies, practices or procedures in order to mitigate and identify potential risks. Among its main objectives are the following:
- Identify vulnerabilities in your information systems.
- Evaluate compliance with internal security policies and regulations.
- To measure the effectiveness of existing control systems.
For that reason, by conducting an audit, you will be able, among other things, to protect your business and customer information and avoid downtime caused by cyber-attacks. All this will lead to increased confidence in your business by your customers and partners.
This guide can serve as a starting point to identify the initial situation of your SME, helping you identify vulnerabilities and improving cyber security processes. However, you should remember that in some cases a professional audit is necessary.
How to perform a ‘home-made’ security audit?
Although it may sound complicated, conducting a security audit does not have to be a nightmare for your business. In this section we will break down the process into small steps so that you can follow them easily.
You can collect the results of each step in a small table, which will allow you to summarise the main findings, prioritise them and design an action plan.
Step 1: Identify your SME's digital assets
The first step to be able to analyse the situation of your SME is to identify its key aspects. For that reason, you should create a list of all your digital assets in order to be able to act on them, including:
- Electronic devices: such as computers, laptops, mobile phones or any other device that is connected to the internet.
- Applications and software: all those programs used in your SME, such as email platforms, CRM programs or cloud storage platforms.
- Other applications: this includes software that your employees may be using but which is not common to the whole company.
Step 2: Identify access and permissions.
If your SME has been running for years, you may have lost track of the number of employees who have been able to access your information. Identifying who has access to key documents or passwords is another essential step in protecting your business, so check the following:
- Remove from the system the accounts of employees who no longer work with you.
- Review the permissions of each employee and check that their accesses are appropriate to their positions within the company.
- For the most critical points, set up two-step authentication.
Step 3: Check that all your software is up to date.
Outdated software is one of the main points of attack for cybercriminals. This is because potential security holes will not have been fixed by the developers. To carry out this step, you can follow these tips:
- Remove all programs that are no longer in use.
- Check that all your computers have the latest versions of their corresponding operating systems.
- Make sure all software is up to date and enable automatic updates whenever possible.
Step 4: Analyse your potential vulnerabilities.
While threats are identified as potential risks that your SME may face, vulnerabilities are all those flaws and weaknesses that already exist in your system. There are numerous tools that can help you identify vulnerabilities in your SME such Nmap, OpenVAS, WireShark or Nessus. In addition, you should also:
- Evaluate possible unencrypted data transfers.
- Check your anti-virus software for possible security flaws.
Step 5: Train your employees.
In 2022, the World Economic Forum published a report stating that 95% of cybersecurity problems are caused by human error. This implies that employees can be an easy point of attack if they are not prepared, to solve this problem you can:
- Teach your employees to recognise the main attacks, such as phishing.
- Conduct controlled test attacks to test their reactions.
- Create practical cybersecurity guidelines to follow in the event of a threat.
Step 6: Back up your data.
As mentioned above, data loss can be devastating for an SME. For that reason, it is key to have a backup and a firm plan of action. You can take the following steps:
- Make regular backups.
- Keep these backups in secure and encrypted locations.
- Establish policies that allow you to perform quickly recoveries.
By following these steps, you should be able to understand your company's situation and improve its cybersecurity, but don't hesitate to ask for help from professionals if you encounter a problem that you are not qualified to deal with.
In our contents you can find more tips on cybersecurity. In addition, if you have not yet done so, by registering on our platform you can take a cybersecurity test to find out how you are positioned, do you want to discover it?