1 in 4 SMBs Hacked Despite Security Measures: Key Findings from Proton's 2026 Report

Hey dev.to community! 👋 Welcome to the Proton organisational blog on Dev.to. We thought this would be a good place to share the original research we undertake, to do with data privacy and cyber security. Here's what our latest survey data reveals about the current state of cyber security for small and medium businesses from our SMB Cybersecurity Report . The Big Picture Proton surveyed 3,000 decision-makers at companies with fewer than 250 employees across six markets: the US, UK, Brazil, France, Germany, and Japan. The headline finding is that nearly 1 in 4 SMBs fell victim to cyberattacks in the past 12 months, despite having security measures in place. Well over 1 million SMBs in these markets suffered a cyberattack last year. Key Findings That Matter to Developers 1. Spending Does Not Equal Security Many SMBs have implemented formal risk assessments, regular audits, multi-factor authentication, and password managers. Yet breaches still happen. The report challenges the "SMBs are un