SonicWall Reframes Annual Research Around SMB Protection Outcomes, Reveals the Seven Deadly Sins in 2026 Cyber Protect Report

New Report Finds Serious, Actionable Attacks Rose More Than 20% as SMBs Face Growing Threat from Increasingly Precise, AI-Enabled Adversaries

MILPITAS, Calif., March 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- SonicWall today announced the release of the  SonicWall 2026 Cyber Protect Report, marking a landmark reframing from traditional threat reporting in favor of the protection outcomes that matter most to business leaders. At the heart of the report is a sobering finding: most SMBs aren't losing ground to sophisticated attacks. They're losing ground to seven predictable, preventable gaps that SonicWall has named the Seven Deadly Sins of Cybersecurity.

The 2026 report continues to draw on data from SonicWall's global network of more than one million security sensors to reveal a threat landscape that is growing more precise and more relentless. Some key statistical findings include:

• High and medium severity attacks surged 20.8% to 13+ billion hits. Attackers aren't striking more often, they're striking smarter.
• Automated bots now generate more than 36,000 vulnerability scans per second, accounting for more than half of all internet traffic. Bad bot traffic alone has surged to 37% of all global internet traffic.
• IoT attacks climbed 11% to 610 million hits; Log4j alone generated 824.9 million (intrusion prevention system) IPS hits in 2025, four years after disclosure.
• Identity, cloud and credential compromise account for 85% of actionable security alerts. The stolen password, not the zero-day, is the attacker's weapon of choice.
• SMBs bear a disproportionate ransomware burden: 88% of their breaches involved ransomware in 2025, more than double the rate seen at large enterprises.

"SonicWall data reveals attacks are getting faster, and in some instances, they're getting a little more sophisticated," said Michael Crean, SVP and GM of Managed Security Services at SonicWall. "But the vast majority of the attacks that we're seeing and investigating are basic fundamentals that continue to be missed. The danger isn't that AI isn't working; it's that we're using it as an excuse not to do the things we already know we should."

The SonicWall 2026 Cyber Protect Report is the first in the company's history to be built around protection outcomes rather than threat statistics alone. In preparing this year's research, SonicWall identified seven recurring patterns, dubbed the Seven Deadly Sins that consistently define the difference between resilience and exposure across SMB breach investigations, security assessments, and incident reviews.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Cybersecurity

Rather than attributing breach risk to exotic or emerging attack methods, the 2026 Protect Report identifies seven operational failures that appear repeatedly across investigations and that remain largely preventable. The Seven Deadly Sins are:

1. Ignoring the Fundamentals: Weak authentication, unpatched systems, and excessive admin privileges remain the primary attack surface.
2. False Confidence: Believing you're too small to be targeted, overestimating control effectiveness, and assuming resilience without testing it create dangerous blind spots.
3. Overexposed Access: Overly permissive rules, flat networks, and implicit trust after authentication give attackers an unobstructed path once inside.
4. Reactive Security Posture: Without 24/7 monitoring and proactive threat hunting, attackers set the timeline. The average breach goes undetected for 181 days.
5. Cost-Driven Security Decisions: Deferring investment based on short-term budget pressure creates costs that arrive later, with interest. A single SMB breach can exceed $4.91 million when downtime and recovery are included.
6. Reliance on Legacy Access Models: VPNs that authenticate once and grant broad network access remain one of the most exploited entry points in enterprise security. VPN CVEs grew 82.5% over the analyzed period.
7. Chasing Hype Over Execution: Buying the latest tools without deploying them completely, and expecting technology to compensate for process gaps, is its own form of vulnerability. Tools don't create outcomes, execution does.

"The organizations that suffer the most are not failing because of sophisticated attacks, they're failing because of predictable, preventable gaps," Crean continued. "SMBs are the backbone of the U.S. economy, representing 99% of all U.S. businesses and nearly half of private sector employment. Protecting them protects entire communities. That's why this report is designed around protection outcomes, not just threat statistics."

In keeping with SonicWall's partner-first mission, the 2026 Cyber Protect Report is designed to equip MSPs and MSSPs with the data and language needed for strategic conversations with SMB decision-makers, translating technical threat intelligence into business risk that leaders can act on.

The SonicWall 2026 Cyber Protect Report makes one thing clear: the gap between protected and exposed rarely comes down to technology. It comes down to execution. For the SMBs and the MSPs and MSSPs who protect them, this report is designed to close that gap with data, clarity, and a road map for what to do next.

To learn more about SonicWall and download the complete SonicWall 2026 Cyber Protect Report, please visit https://www.sonicwall.com/resources/white-papers/sonicwall-2026-cyber-protect-report. 

About SonicWall
For more than 30 years, SonicWall has championed a partner-first model that combines purpose-built technology, cloud-delivered security services and real-time threat intelligence to help businesses prevent breaches, reduce risk and stay operational in the face of evolving modern threats. We are committed to delivering the best security outcomes for our customers where others deliver features and functions.  Through its unified cybersecurity portfolio and global community of over 17,000 partners, SonicWall enables managed service providers to actively manage, continuously optimize and measurably protect networks, cloud environments, endpoints and applications. The company is redefining cybersecurity around outcomes that matter to business leaders, including breach prevention, compliance achievement, cost efficiency and reduced human error, because protection is not about what a product can do but about what it actually delivers.

SOURCE SonicWall