Pillar
Engineering-framed topics; secure-by-construction
26 articles • Page 2 of 3
Nearly a third of breaches in 2025 involved a third party, double the year before. The sub-processor problem means every SaaS tool hands your data to its vendors' vendors. Third-party risk and data governance are one problem.
Non-compliance costs $14.82 million on average versus $5.47 million to maintain compliance, a 2.71x gap. Compliance engineering means building systems where evidence generates itself, not assembling it from memory before each audit.
Sonatype counted 1.23 million malicious packages. Your lockfile security posture determines whether those packages reach production or stop at the gate. The dependency layer is the attack surface now.
Prevention costs $5K-$15K per year. A single incident averages $254,445. The math is a 50-to-1 ratio. The psychology explains why 47% of small businesses still allocate zero.
60% of breaches involve the human element. Technology alone can't fix that. Security culture means everyone knows their role — not just the person who manages the firewall.
Cyber insurance questions for a small business start with MFA and a restore date, not the premium. CISA small-business guidance (April 2024) and the NAIC 2025 market report. Ask what the form requires before you sign.
Your vendor's security posture is part of your security posture. When they have access to your systems, their vulnerabilities become yours.
A cybersecurity policy for a small business with no security team is one page: who reports, MFA, lost devices. FTC small-business guidance and CISA (April 2024). Write it so a contractor can follow it.
Employee training matters, but it's not a complete email security strategy. Here's what else you should have in place — and how AI has changed what 'suspicious' looks like.
