“85% of UK businesses that suffered a cyberattack last year were hit by phishing. The other 15% probably thought it wouldn’t happen to them too.”
It usually starts with one email. Someone in finance clicks a link that looks like it came from a supplier. Twenty minutes later, an account is compromised, and by the time anyone notices, the damage is already done.
This is not a rare scenario. It is the reality for a huge number of UK small businesses. According to the Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, phishing remains the single most common and disruptive type of attack, experienced by 85% of businesses that reported a breach in the last 12 months. The same survey found that adoption of basic protections like two-factor authentication sits at just 40% of businesses, with VPN use for remote staff at only 31%.
In other words, most small and medium businesses in the UK are running with the back door unlocked and do not know it.
At Sprint Integration, we have carried out hundreds of IT Health Checks for businesses across London, Essex and the South East. Every single time, we find the same five hidden risks. None of them show any warning signs before something goes wrong. Here they are, and how to fix them.
Prefer to watch instead of read? Jon Barns breaks down all five risks in this short video.
1. Identity and Access: The Number One Entry Point
Weak identity and access controls are the most common way attackers get into a business, and this is exactly where most breaches start. When we carry out an IT Health Check, this is always the first place we look.
What we check
- Is multi-factor authentication enabled, especially on email and admin accounts?
- Are there stale accounts still active from staff who left months or years ago?
- How many people have global admin access?
- Are shared logins being used across the team?
Missing MFA and poor credential management cost almost nothing to fix, yet they remain the most common entry point for attackers. If you cannot answer these four questions right now, that is a risk sitting in your business today.
2. Backup and Recovery: The Confidence Gap
Almost every business we speak to tells us they have a backup. That confidence rarely survives three simple questions.
The three questions that matter
- Do your backups cover your servers, your Microsoft 365 data, and your cloud systems, not just one of them?
- Are you using cloud backup with snapshot or continuous data protection, or are you relying on tape or disk-based backups?
- When did you last actually test a restore?
A backup that has never been tested is not a working backup, it is an assumption. We have seen businesses lose weeks of data because a backup had been silently failing for months and nobody knew until it was needed.
3. Patch and Update Posture
Unpatched software is one of the most common causes of successful cyberattacks in the UK, and it is entirely avoidable. Every software update usually contains a fix for a known vulnerability. When updates are delayed or forgotten, that vulnerability stays open for anyone to find.
When we run an IT Health Check, we look at Windows patching status across every device, whether firewall firmware is current, and whether any outdated systems are still quietly running on the network.
The fix is automated patch management, so updates happen in the background without anyone needing to remember. If your current IT provider is not managing this proactively, it is worth asking why.
Not sure how your business stacks up against these risks so far?
Our free IT Health Check (worth £950) checks all five, including the two below. Book yours here or call 0330 094 0900.
4. Firewall and Perimeter Security, and Why Monitoring Matters Just as Much
Many business owners believe they have a firewall because their internet provider supplied a router. They do not. An ISP router is not a firewall, and relying on one is like locking the front door while leaving a window wide open round the back.
What proper perimeter protection looks like
- A dedicated firewall in place, not just a router
- No exposed services like RDP or open ports left visible to attackers
- Staff connecting through a secure VPN rather than directly
Sprint Integration partners with WatchGuard, one of the leading firewall providers in the industry, to make sure our clients have genuine perimeter protection rather than a false sense of security.
5. Monitoring and Visibility
You cannot protect what you cannot see, and this is the risk most businesses never think to check. Many SMEs have no real-time monitoring, no centralised logging, and no one who gets alerted when something unusual happens on the network. A security incident that goes undetected for days or weeks causes significantly more damage than one caught within the first hour. When we carry out a Health Check, we look at whether RMM monitoring tools are active, whether logging or SIEM is in place, and critically, who actually receives the alerts when something goes wrong.
Why This Matters More Than Ever for UK SMEs
The numbers back up what we see on the ground. The Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found that among businesses reporting a breach, phishing, impersonation and malware remain the dominant threats, and smaller organisations consistently under-invest in monitoring and risk assessment compared to medium and large businesses. The good news is that small businesses are starting to close the gap, with the proportion of small businesses carrying out cyber security risk assessments rising to 48% in 2025, up from 41% the year before.
That is real progress, but it also means over half of small businesses still have no formal risk assessment in place at all. Most businesses have at least two or three of the five risks above without realising it, simply because nobody has looked.
This is exactly why managed IT support London and managed IT support Essex businesses turn to Sprint Integration is not just to fix problems when they happen, but to find and close these gaps before they become a headline.
How Sprint Integration Helps
Sprint Integration has spent over 25 years supporting businesses across London, Essex and the South East, carrying out hundreds of IT Health Checks and helping 300+ UK SMEs stay secure and operational. Our clients stay with us, with a 90% client retention rate built on proactive support rather than reactive firefighting.
We offer a free IT Health Check, worth £950, so you can find out exactly where you stand against these five risks:
- A UK-based engineer reviews your entire IT environment across identity and access, backup, patching, perimeter security, and monitoring
- You receive a full written report in plain English
- A briefing covering every finding, with no jargon and no obligation
If you are not sure which of these five risks applies to your business, that uncertainty is the risk itself. Book your free IT Health Check or call 0330 094 0900 to get a clear picture of where your business stands.
Sprint Integration. Proactive IT support for UK businesses, built on 25 years of trust.
