Top 5 Cybersecurity Steps

What are the most important cybersecurity steps for a business?

The five most important cybersecurity steps for a business in 2026 are advanced email protection, phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, endpoint detection and response on every device, continuous security awareness training, and a tested incident response plan. Together, these controls block the most common attacks and limit the damage from the ones that get through.

Your people are the heart of any security program. Attackers know it too, which is why most breaches still start with a human being tricked rather than a firewall being cracked. The tools have evolved a lot, though. Here's what belongs on your list now, in priority order.

1. Do you need email protection?

Email is still the front door for most attacks. 80–95% of all breaches begin with email compromise, and 90% involve a phishing attack. AI has made those emails very convincing. The typo-riddled scams of the past have been replaced by polished, personalized emails that can impersonate your CEO, your bank, or your vendors with unsettling accuracy.

Modern cloud email security platforms use machine learning to analyze sender behavior, language patterns, and account activity, catching impersonation attempts that traditional spam filters miss entirely. We can deploy advanced email protection for your team in a matter of hours and monitor its effectiveness over time.

Net Friends Pro-Tip: Configure DKIM, SPF, and DMARC on your email domain. These authentication standards prove your legitimate mail is really from you and make it much harder for attackers to spoof your domain.

2. Is MFA still enough on its own?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is still essential. Even so, only 35% of small and medium-sized businesses use it. If yours is not one of them, talk to your IT team about getting it in place. Microsoft reports that MFA can block 99% of fraudulent login attempts, which is a lot of protection for a little extra effort.

The extra step can be annoying, and that friction is exactly why adoption lags. That is why many small businesses are turning to Single Sign-On (SSO) and passkeys, which verify your identity cryptographically and eliminate most of the MFA prompts. You stay secure without feeling like you need a secret handshake just to check your email.

If your organization still relies on SMS codes, switching to an authenticator app is a solid first step. Passkeys are the real destination. Start with your most critical accounts like email, banking, and admin access to your infrastructure, then expand from there. We can help you roll out phishing-resistant authentication that protects your business without turning every login into an obstacle course.

Net Friends Pro-Tip: Pair your passkey rollout with an account recovery plan. A lost phone should be a minor hiccup, not a lockout.

3. What replaced antivirus for protecting devices?

Traditional antivirus has been superseded by endpoint detection and response, or EDR. Where antivirus looked for known bad files, EDR watches for suspicious behavior in real time and can isolate a compromised machine before an attacker moves deeper into your network. For most small and mid-sized businesses, managed detection and response (MDR) is the smarter buy because it pairs the technology with a 24x7 team of human analysts.

Beyond EDR, a layered approach still applies. Keep full disk encryption. Enroll every phone, tablet, and laptop in a mobile device management platform such as Microsoft Intune so you control which apps touch your data and can remotely wipe a lost device. And patch relentlessly, because unpatched software remains one of the easiest ways in.

Net Friends Pro-Tip: Have your IT team measure your environment against the free CIS Benchmarks, then commission a third party to assess your infrastructure for shadow IT and other blind spots. You can't protect what you don't know you have.

4. How often should employees get security training?

Continuously, not annually. A single onboarding video is no match for attackers who evolve their tactics daily. Effective programs deliver short, frequent training paired with simulated phishing campaigns, so employees build the reflex of pausing before they click. With AI-generated phishing and deepfake voice scams now targeting businesses of every size, that reflex matters more than ever.

Ask yourself a few questions. Does your onboarding include cybersecurity training on day one? Do your staff know exactly how to report a suspicious email? Do you have a written policy covering passwords and acceptable use? If any answer is no, that's your starting point. We can help you build a full security policy and training program that keeps employees engaged.

Net Friends Pro-Tip: Run regular phishing simulations and track the results over time. The goal isn't to shame the clickers. It's to find your training gaps before an attacker does.

5. Why practice incident response before an incident?

The worst time to write your emergency plan is during the emergency. Even excellent defenses will not stop every attack. When one lands, the speed and clarity of your response determine the impact of the incident. Regulations and cyber insurance policies increasingly require a documented, tested plan.

Run tabletop exercises at least once a year. Walk your leadership team through a realistic scenario, such as ransomware locking your file server on a Friday afternoon, and identify who does what, who calls whom, and where the plan breaks down. There really is no substitute for practice. Contact us to help you develop and drill a Security Incident Response Plan tailored to your business.

Extra credit: Pair your plan with 24x7 managed detection and response. If your incident response only starts when someone notices something is wrong, you could be responding to an intrusion that began weeks ago. Continuous monitoring shrinks that window from months to minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Stay Safe!

Whether you are engaging us to implement these improvements or going it alone, we encourage you to implement and require use of MFA. And if you'd rather not go it alone, that's what friends are for. Contact us today to talk through your IT security strategy.

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