Supply chain breaches have quadrupled in five years

💰 Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Big Budget Doesn't Guarantee Security

One in four SMEs has suffered a data breach in the past twelve months, despite budgets that can exceed 250,000 euros annually. This is the paradox highlighted in the 2026 edition of the Proton Report on SME Cybersecurity, which surveyed 3,000 decision-makers across six countries. In France, the average budget allocated to cybersecurity is €27,000 per year, yet 222,250 French companies were reportedly victims of a cyberattack last year, according to the study’s projections.

The problem isn't a lack of awareness or tools. 73% of French SMEs have conducted a formal risk assessment within the past year, and more than half review their security posture monthly or quarterly. 92% already have security measures in place. What is lacking is execution: implementing security with real human expertise requires much more than simply deploying tools. The consequences are tangible: 39% of attacked companies lost data, 31% experienced a business shutdown, and 23% had funds stolen—with financial losses ranging from €4,250 to €84,000, often equivalent to an entire year’s security budget.

So the question is no longer "Are we investing enough?" but "Are we investing in the right places?"

Without experts to monitor the system, interpret alerts, and respond at the right moment, the budget remains just a line item on a ledger—not a shield.

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Source: ITmanager, Cybersecurity

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🧑 Gartner IAM Summit 2026:identity the First Line of Defense

Attackers are now exploiting valid credentials to gain access to systems, rendering traditional defenses less effective. Once access is gained, the attack progresses extremely quickly: over the past twelve months, the average lateral movement time has been 29 minutes, with a recorded minimum of 27 seconds, according to CrowdStrike. This is one of the key findings from the Gartner IAM Summit 2026, held in London on March 9 and 10. The overall message is clear:identity become the primary perimeter to defend.

The vendors in attendance all agreed on the same priorities: comprehensive visibility into access, governance of non-human identities—AI agents, service accounts, APIs—and a gradual shift away from traditional MFA toward phishing-resistant mechanisms. On average, organizations are only aware of about half of the devices accessing their applications, as 1Password pointed out. What you can’t see, you can’t protect.

On the issue of tool selection, Gartner was keen to clarify the proper use of its own Magic Quadrant. The best vendor is, above all, the one that aligns with each organization’s needs and use cases, emphasized Brian Guthrie, an analyst and research director at Gartner. Only 60% of the vendors in the quadrant offer 99.99% availability, and orchestration capabilities remain unevenly deployed. In other words: being a leader in a Magic Quadrant does not mean being the right choice for your specific context.

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Source: ICT Journal, ICT Journal (2)

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🔏 Supply chain: Trust is no longer enough; it must be managed

Major supply chain breaches have nearly quadrupled since 2020, according to IBM’s 2026 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index. The modus operandi is well-known: attackers no longer launch direct attacks. They target interconnected systems and trusted integrations—suppliers, open-source dependencies, CI/CD workflows, and cloud interfaces—to slip into production environments using legitimate access credentials. SaaS isn’t the problem. Ungoverned access is.

By 2026, the supply chain will become a continuous operational metric. Annual questionnaires and self-reported audits will give way to requirements for proof: dependency monitoring, shared metrics, and access traceability. Every supplier, every API, and every integration represents an extension of the risk scope. The question isn’t whether your third parties use SaaS—that’s a given. The question is: do you know exactly who is accessing what, with what permissions, and since when?

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Source: IBM, Digital Solutions

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