The Security Debt Small Businesses Took On in 2020

By the end of 2020, many small businesses had survived the immediate chaos of remote work.

But survival came with a cost.

Emergency decisions made early in the year - quickly, under pressure - had quietly accumulated into something far more dangerous: security debt.

What Security Debt Looked Like

Security debt didn’t feel urgent day to day. It hid in plain sight as:

• Temporary access that was never removed

• Personal devices still connected to company systems

• VPN accounts no longer tied to active employees

• Tools layered on top of tools with no oversight

Everything still worked — which made it easy to ignore.

Why It Was Hard to Address

Unlike technical debt, security debt didn’t break systems immediately.

It:

• Increased blast radius

• Reduced visibility

• Made incidents harder to investigate

And because many businesses were still focused on staying operational, cleanup kept getting postponed.

The Long-Term Risk

By late 2020, attackers had adapted to remote environments.

They exploited:

• Stale credentials

• Unmonitored remote access

• Poorly secured endpoints

Incidents were no longer just about ransomware. They involved:

• Email compromise

• Fraud

• Data exposure

Security debt turned small mistakes into large vulnerabilities.

The Realization Going Into 2021

Businesses began to understand:
Emergency setups were never designed to last.

To move forward safely, they needed to:

• Audit access and devices

• Remove unnecessary permissions

• Standardize security controls

• Assign ownership to ongoing security

Cleaning up wasn’t optional anymore.

How Info Advantage Helped

Info Advantage worked with businesses to unwind emergency decisions and replace them with structured, manageable security environments.

That meant:

• Identifying lingering risks

• Rebuilding access controls

• Implementing consistent monitoring

Because ignoring security debt doesn’t make it disappear - it makes it compound.