October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and while headlines often focus on massive breaches at global enterprises or scrappy startups caught off guard, there’s another segment squarely in the crosshairs: the mid-market. For cybercriminals, midsized companies are the digital equivalent of the Goldilocks Zone—conditions “just right” for profitable attacks. Not too small to ignore, not too big to resist, but positioned for maximum return with minimal effort.
According to the RSM US Middle Market Cybersecurity Report 2025, drops in cyberattacks were seen for both larger and smaller middle-market companies, but larger midsized companies were twice as likely to suffer a breach, with 24 percent of respondents in this segment reporting a breach compared to 12 percent of their smaller counterparts.¹
Why Hackers Love the Middle
Mid-market businesses—typically $10 million to $1 billion in revenue—don’t look much different from enterprise cousins. They run on critical systems, manage sensitive data, and rely on complex supply chains.
But here’s the rub: most operate without the sprawling security departments and multimillion-dollar budgets of Fortune 500s. Their IT teams wear too many hats, systems are a patchwork of legacy and cloud, and defenses cobbled from mismatched tools leave gaps attackers exploit. Add in today’s threat landscape—AI-driven phishing, dark-web zero-days, and ransomware-as-a-service—and mid-market defenses can’t keep pace.
The math is almost unfair. Enterprises are costly, time-intensive targets with higher odds of failure. Small businesses may not yield enough data to bother with. Mid-market companies hit the golden ratio: rich enough to pay off, lean enough in defenses to make the attack relatively low-risk.
The numbers tell the story: one in four middle-market companies suffered a breach, and more than one in four faced ransomware.2 And compliance doesn’t lighten the load. Regulations like HIPAA, GDPR, and CMMC add layers of responsibility for leaders already stretched thin, creating yet another “just right” gap for attackers to exploit.
Inside the Attacker’s Playbook
Think of it like fishing. Enterprises are like trophy fish: hard to catch, heavily regulated waters, requiring special gear and patience. Small businesses are minnows: easy to hook, but not worth the trouble. Mid-market companies? They’re the fat, plentiful salmon running the river.
Attackers know this. They don’t just spray and pray; they calculate. They look for enough digital sprawl to blend into, but not so much monitoring that they’ll trip alarms immediately. They look for companies that process payments, handle health records, or hold valuable designs, but lack the in-house SOC, 24/7 monitoring, or zero-trust architecture that would make an attack costlier than the reward.
This is why mid-market breaches often look like precision strikes. Ransomware operators target billing, email scams trick one finance staffer, supply chain compromises sneak through to enterprise partners. Attackers don’t need to bulldoze the house—just find the kitchen keys. Third-party risk makes this worse. Mid-market vendors often connect upstream to larger enterprises, meaning one weak link can expose an entire supply chain. And when attackers succeed, the fallout is costly: IBM’s 2025 report pegs the average breach at $4.44 million—a devastating hit for businesses without enterprise reserves.3
Escaping the Goldilocks Trap
If you’re leading a mid-market organization, recognizing this reality is the first defense. Attackers will keep circling so long as conditions stay favorable. The goal is to shift the math: raise the cost of attack, shrink the potential reward, and signal that your organization is more trouble than it’s worth. That doesn’t mean trying to outspend enterprises. It means focusing on pragmatic steps that tilt the equation:
- Close the common gaps: Implement MFA, patch regularly, train employees to spot phishing, and monitor endpoints.
- Strengthen visibility: Ensure you can see and protect assets across hybrid IT environments.
- Prepare for response: Build and rehearse recovery steps so downtime and losses don’t balloon.
It also means looking ahead. Mid-market leaders who modernize their defenses now aren’t just avoiding breaches—they’re positioning cybersecurity as a competitive advantage. Resilience builds customer trust, smooths compliance, and makes partnerships with larger enterprises more secure. When you make the effort-to-reward ratio less attractive, hackers will move on in search of softer targets.
NexusTek: Turning “Just Right” Into “Too Tough”
At NexusTek, we support mid-market businesses that too often fall into the Goldilocks Zone. With managed cybersecurity services, cloud modernization, and resilient infrastructure solutions, we help organizations raise their defenses without raising costs to enterprise levels. The result? A mid-market business that’s too visible, too prepared, and too resilient for attackers looking for easy wins.
This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, don’t settle for “just right.” Make your organization the one hackers decide to leave behind.
Ready to keep cybercriminals out of your porridge, chair, and bed?
- RSM, US Middle Market Business Index Special Report: Cybersecurity 2025, April 2025
- Ibid.
- IBM, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, July 2025
