A typical visit to the dentist includes a dental X-ray. Why? Because it identifies underlying issues that can’t be seen. Those issues can lead to pain, costly dental work and a loss of productivity during the healing process. Vulnerability scans are no different. Vulnerability scans identify underlying network issues that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. However, when these issues are identified and exploited by a cybercriminal, they result in organizational distress, loss and disruption in productivity.

Cybercriminals scan your computer systems from the outside for vulnerabilities in your firewall (if you have one). Once breached, hackers use automation to quickly probe every single device connected to your network, looking for an opening to gain administrative access to take over a computer or even the entire network. For cybercriminals, it’s not the size of the business that matters, it’s the ease of access.

Although many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) think they’re too insignificant to draw the attention of hackers, breach reports prove otherwise with 66% of SMBs experiencing a cyberattack in the past 12 months. Most of those attacks (70%) were executed via web applications and miscellaneous errors, aka internal vulnerabilities.