About one in six Canadian businesses was hit by a cybersecurity incident in 2024. For SMBs, the number is even more troubling: nearly three-quarters of SMB leaders in Canada reported at least one incident in recent surveys. Yet only 47% of Canadian SMBs feel ready to face a cyberattack. If your SMB is based in Montreal, here are the five most common threats you need to know about, along with concrete steps to protect against them.
Quick answer: The 5 most common threats facing Montreal SMBs in 2026 are phishing, ransomware, credential theft, unpatched vulnerabilities, and AI-driven attacks. Protection comes down to MFA, backups, and staff training.
1. Phishing: the most frequent and most effective threat
Phishing remains by far the number one threat for SMBs in 2025-2026. According to the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s National Cyber Threat Assessment 2025-2026, 60% of successful attacks start with a fraudulent email. The reason is simple: it’s the path of least resistance. Rather than trying to break through your technical defenses, a cybercriminal targets your employees directly.
What makes the threat particularly serious in 2026 is the widespread use of generative AI to craft convincing emails, free of typos, personalized, and hard to tell apart from the real thing. An untrained employee has a good chance of falling for it.
Recommended protection against phishing
How to protect yourself: Regular employee training, phishing simulations, advanced email filtering (Microsoft Defender for Office 365), and multi-factor authentication (MFA) on every account.
2. Ransomware: total paralysis in a matter of hours
Canada saw a 35% jump in ransomware attacks in 2024 compared to the year before. Ransomware encrypts all your files and demands a ransom to get them back. For an SMB, that usually means a complete halt to operations for several days, significant financial losses, and damage to your reputation with clients.
SMBs are prime targets because they have fewer resources dedicated to cybersecurity than large enterprises, yet they hold data valuable enough to make an attack worthwhile.
Recommended protection against ransomware
How to protect yourself: Regular backups, tested and stored offline, advanced endpoint protection (EDR/XDR), systematic updates, and network segmentation to limit the spread of an attack.
3. Business email compromise (BEC)
BEC fraud (Business Email Compromise) is a sophisticated form of phishing where the criminal poses as an executive, supplier, or partner to trigger a fraudulent wire transfer or gain access to systems. In Canada, losses tied to BEC fraud reached $67.3 million in 2024, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
This type of attack specifically targets employees with authority to make payments or change banking details. An email that appears to come from the CEO asking for an urgent transfer “outside the usual process” is a classic red flag.
How to spot and stop BEC fraud
How to protect yourself: Dual-approval procedures for any wire transfer or change to banking details, training for finance teams, and systematic phone verification for any unusual request.
4. Cloud misconfigurations
With the rapid adoption of cloud environments (Microsoft 365, Azure, OneDrive, SharePoint), configuration errors have become one of the most common causes of data leaks. Files accidentally shared publicly, overly broad permissions, or poorly secured admin accounts can expose sensitive data without any external attack needed.
The problem is often invisible: nobody realizes the data is exposed until an incident occurs or an audit uncovers it.
How to protect yourself: Regular audits of cloud permissions and configurations, conditional access policies, review of external shares, and training administrators on Microsoft 365 best practices.
5. Compromised passwords and the lack of MFA
Billions of username and password combinations circulate on the dark web as a result of data breaches over the past few years. Cybercriminals use automated tools to test these combinations against hundreds of services at once, a technique known as “credential stuffing.” If an employee reuses the same password across multiple services, a single leak can compromise several of your company’s accounts.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the single most effective safeguard against this type of attack. Even if a password is compromised, the attacker can’t access the account without the second factor. Yet many SMBs still haven’t turned on MFA for all their critical accounts.
How to protect yourself: Mandatory MFA on Microsoft 365, email, VPN access, and any critical tool. A password manager for the whole team. Suspicious login alerts turned on.
Where to start if you don’t have a dedicated IT team
If your SMB has no in-house cybersecurity resource, the recommended starting point is an audit of your current environment. This audit gives you a clear picture of your protection level, flags priority gaps, and lays out a realistic action plan based on your budget.
The highest-impact measures to put in place first are generally:
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These four measures don’t require a large budget but drastically reduce your exposure to the most common threats.
Frequently asked questions about cybersecurity for SMBs in Montreal
How much does a cybersecurity incident cost an SMB on average?
The average cost of a data breach in Canada in 2025 was $6.98 million according to IBM, but that figure includes large enterprises. For SMBs, direct costs (remediation, potential ransom, lost productivity) generally range from $50,000 to $500,000, not counting reputational damage and lost clients.
Where should we start if we’ve never invested in cybersecurity?
The four highest-impact measures to implement first: enable MFA on all Microsoft 365 accounts, set up tested backups stored offsite, train employees on phishing, and keep all devices up to date. These four actions cover the majority of the most common attack vectors.
Is cybersecurity mandatory for SMBs in Quebec?
Quebec’s Law 25 on the protection of personal information imposes obligations on businesses that manage personal data: adequate protection measures, incident reporting, and appointing a privacy officer. An SMB that suffers a data breach without the required protections in place risks sanctions from the Commission d’accès à l’information.
OKTO Solutions helps Montreal and Quebec SMBs put in place cybersecurity that fits their reality. Check out our cybersecurity services for SMBs or contact us for a first conversation, no strings attached.
To learn more, see Microsoft Defender for Business on Microsoft Learn.