Unpopular opinion: that 60% of small businesses fold within 6 months of a breach stat feels like fear mongering, or am I wrong?

Ray Sullivan · 2026-09-17T14:40:03.769857+00:00

I was reading a report from Verizon's Data Breach Investigations thing last week (the 2024 one) and it said something like 60% of small companies go under within half a year of getting hit by a cyberattack. That number sounded crazy to me so I started digging. Turns out a lot of it traces back to one old survey from the National Cyber Security Alliance that got repeated so many times everyone treats it as gospel. On one hand, yeah, a bad breach can wreck a shop that has no backups and no plan. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of small places get hit and bounce back fine after a week of cleanup. So which is it, is the stat real or just a scary story we keep passing around? Anyone here actually work somewhere that got breached and survived to tell it?

Vivisector

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Unpopular opinion: that 60% of small businesses fold within 6 months of a breach stat feels like fear mongering, or am I wrong? | Cybersecurity Tips - Vivisector