Unfortunately, I can vouch for the thrust of Erik Knight’s message.

Knight is CEO of SimpleWan, a VoIP service provider that, among other offerings, helps business stay on top of security. Knight wants to get out the word that businesses large and small should take security more seriously. Especially smaller firms.

“Most business owners have the attitude of ‘This can't happen to me, I'm not big enough,’ Knight told TechZone360 recently. “The cold hard facts are they are the most at risk because hackers are moving downstream looking for easy targets like them.”

I can vouch. I run a small business, and I never would have thought that hacking would be high on my list of business priorities. That’s until I began dealing with a litany of security challenges from automated hacking bots. While I’ve handled the problems, it has been a huge headache. And thankfully, my business doesn’t have a lot of data to lose. If it did, I might very well have lost my business.

Big firms know the risks, so they are beefing up security and taking the growing cybersecurity issues seriously. But smaller firms, those already burdened with a lack of resources, are all too temped to ignore the problem until it is too late.

“Fortune 500 companies are taking security very seriously and hardening their security,” says Knight. “This means hackers are going after smaller targets that don't take it as seriously.”

Knight and SimpleWan are on a mission to raise awareness of this issue. Of course, they offer a solution and believe it can help meet the security concerns that are being raised, but there’s also a larger public service role that the company is playing.

“Education is key. We see ourselves as making the market aware of what is going on,” Knight noted. “If they like our solution, great, but we want to get the message out. The bottom line is the risk or exposure is so great, putting your head in the sand doesn't work anymore. These types of risks can be business-enders and [businesses] need to do something.”

Knight will be speaking on cybersecurity and this message of education and preparation at ITEXPO in For Lauderdale, which takes place January 26-28, 2016. During a session on Tuesday, January 26, Knight will discuss both cybersecurity in the telecom space in general and how it relates to the European Union’s 2015 cybersecurity law in particular.

The session will look at what the EU law and the rise in hack attempts means for business today, and how firms should prepare for such attacks.

As Knight noted, every business is a target. Even mine.