If you run a 5–30 person business in Savannah — a law firm in the historic district, a dental practice in Pooler, an accounting firm in Richmond Hill — you've probably been told you need "enterprise-grade cybersecurity." That phrase is mostly sales theater. The actual work of protecting a small business is unglamorous, finite, and almost always within reach of a normal IT budget.
Here is the priority order we hold every Coastal Georgia client to, and what it looks like to do each one well.
1. MFA on every account that touches sensitive data
The single biggest force multiplier for any small business security program is multi-factor authentication. The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report keeps reporting the same finding it has for a decade: the overwhelming majority of breaches involve stolen credentials, and the overwhelming majority of those credentials would have been useless to the attacker if MFA were on.
What good looks like: every employee uses an authenticator app (or a hardware key for admins) on Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the company password manager, the VPN, and any cloud admin console. SMS-only MFA is the bare minimum and should be retired in favor of app-based or phishing-resistant options.
The cost is essentially zero. The setup is a one-evening project. The push-back you'll get is "it's annoying," and the answer is: yes, mildly, and one ransomware incident will be many orders of magnitude more annoying.
2. Endpoint protection (EDR) on every laptop and server
Traditional antivirus blocked known-bad files. Modern endpoint detection and response (EDR) watches for known-bad behavior — a process spawning PowerShell that then writes encrypted files to user folders, for example. That's the pattern most ransomware follows, and it can be detected and stopped in seconds.
For a Savannah small business, you don't need a SOC-as-a-service contract or a six-figure SIEM. You need an EDR product running on every endpoint, configured by someone who knows what to look for, with someone monitoring the alerts that matter. We deploy a managed EDR baseline as part of our cybersecurity services, but plenty of business-grade products work — the configuration matters more than the brand.
3. Encrypted, tested backups with an off-site copy
Backups are the difference between "we had a bad week" and "we don't exist anymore." But most small-business backups have one or both of two fatal problems:
- They've never been tested. The first time you'll find out the backup doesn't restore is the day you need it.
- They live on the same network as the production data, so ransomware encrypts them too.
What good looks like: daily encrypted backups, with at least one immutable off-site copy (something the attacker can't modify or delete even with full domain access), and a documented restore drill at least quarterly. We schedule actual restore tests for our clients — pick a random folder, restore it to a sandbox, confirm it works. Boring but essential.
4. Patching that actually happens
The breaches that make the news almost always exploit vulnerabilities with patches available for months. The reason patches don't get applied isn't malice — it's that nobody owns the work. Setting up automated patching for OS, browsers, and the handful of business-critical apps is a 4-hour project and prevents a meaningful slice of all real-world attacks.
This is exactly the kind of work managed IT exists to do. If you don't have an IT partner, the question to ask any candidate is: "What's your patching SLA, and how do you verify it's happening?"
5. Phishing training that respects everyone's time
Most breaches start with a click. But the standard corporate "complete this 45-minute training module" approach to phishing awareness has terrible retention. What works better, especially in a small business:
- A quarterly simulated phishing campaign (a fake-but-realistic phishing email) so people develop real-world judgment
- 5-minute training nudges, not 45-minute videos
- A clear, no-blame reporting channel — "I clicked it, I think" is the most important message any employee can send, and they need to feel safe sending it fast
6. A documented incident-response runbook
The middle of an incident is the worst time to figure out what to do. A two-page runbook listing the steps for the most likely scenarios (lost laptop, suspicious email click, ransomware detected, locked-out account) saves hours when they matter. Include phone numbers for your cyber insurance carrier, your legal contact, the relevant Georgia regulator if applicable, and your IT partner.
Compliance: what Savannah's regulated industries actually need
Different industries have different overlay requirements. For Savannah's most common regulated small businesses:
- Law firms — ABA Model Rule 1.6 requires "reasonable efforts" to prevent unauthorized disclosure. In practice that means MFA, encryption at rest, access controls, and audit logs. Most state bar opinions interpret this in line with what we've already listed.
- Medical and dental practices — HIPAA requires the Security Rule administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. The baseline above maps to those directly. You'll also need signed BAAs with any vendor that touches PHI.
- Accounting firms — PCI-DSS if you take card payments, plus state-level data-breach notification obligations. Georgia's notification statute (O.C.G.A. § 10-1-911) triggers on unauthorized acquisition of personal information; SC has a similar law for clients in Bluffton or Hilton Head.
These aren't separate stacks. They're the same baseline with a paper trail.
Where to start
If you're starting from zero, do them in this order: MFA, EDR, backups, patching, phishing training, runbook. The first three carry most of the weight; the rest compound on top.
If you want a sized-up plan for your specific business, we offer a free 30-minute security assessment for any Coastal Georgia small business — Savannah, Pooler, Richmond Hill, Hinesville, Statesboro, Bluffton, or Hilton Head. You get a one-page remediation plan whether or not you ever work with us.