Cybersecurity company SonicWall has released its 2026 Cyber Protect Report, marking a significant shift in how the company frames its annual research — moving away from raw threat statistics toward actionable protection outcomes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

The report identifies what SonicWall calls the “Seven Deadly Sins” of SMB cybersecurity — a framework of common failure patterns that leave organisations disproportionately exposed to modern cyber threats.

A reframing of threat intelligence for SMBs

The 2026 edition reflects a broader industry acknowledgement that traditional threat reporting — focused on attack volumes and malware variants — has limited practical utility for SMB leaders who lack dedicated security teams. By anchoring findings to protection outcomes, SonicWall aims to make its research more directly actionable for the businesses most at risk.

SMBs have become increasingly attractive targets for cybercriminals, given their often limited security budgets, legacy infrastructure, and reduced capacity to respond rapidly to incidents. The report is designed to help these organisations identify where their defences are most likely to fail and where investment will have the greatest impact.

Guidance for security teams

While specific findings from the Seven Deadly Sins framework were not disclosed in the press release, SonicWall’s report is available in full for security practitioners and SMB leaders seeking a detailed breakdown of the year’s most critical protection gaps. The reframed methodology signals a growing trend among cybersecurity vendors to translate threat data into business risk language — a shift driven by the need to communicate security priorities to non-technical decision makers.