Cybersecurity Checklist for Orange County Businesses in 2026

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on all accounts provides the highest security ROI. It stops 99.9% of account compromise attacks and costs nothing with most business software. After MFA, prioritize EDR security, enterprise password management, and immutable backups.

Industry benchmarks suggest 7-10% of IT budget for security, or roughly $1,000-2,000 per employee annually for comprehensive protection. This includes EDR, backup, training, and monitoring. Compare this to average breach costs of $4.45 million—prevention is dramatically cheaper than response.

Yes. CCPA/CPRA applies to businesses with $25M+ revenue, data on 100K+ consumers, or 50%+ revenue from data sales. Requirements include data inventories, privacy policies, consumer rights processes, and 72-hour breach notification. Penalties reach $7,500 per intentional violation.

Conduct formal security assessments annually at minimum. However, continuous monitoring, monthly vulnerability scans, and quarterly access reviews are essential. Threats evolve constantly—annual-only reviews leave dangerous gaps.

It depends on your team size and expertise. Businesses under 100 employees rarely have the staff for 24/7 security monitoring. MSSPs provide economies of scale, specialized expertise, and continuous coverage that most SMBs cannot match internally. Evaluate providers based on incident response experience and industry compliance knowledge.