You don’t need a six-figure security budget to protect your small business. You need the right tools, configured properly, and actually used.

Here are five tools that deliver genuine security value for Australian SMBs without requiring a dedicated security team to manage them.

1. Microsoft Defender for Business

What it does: Endpoint protection (antivirus, anti-malware) plus threat detection and response.

Why it matters: Basic antivirus isn’t enough anymore. Attackers use techniques that slip past traditional signatures. Defender for Business watches for suspicious behaviour, not just known bad files.

What it costs: Often included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($30.50/user/month). Standalone is around $4.50/user/month.

The reality check: If you’re already on Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you’re paying for this whether you use it or not. Yet I regularly find businesses where it’s not properly enabled.

Turn it on. Configure the security policies. Use the security dashboard to check alerts weekly.

2. A Business Password Manager

What it does: Generates, stores, and fills unique passwords for every account. Enables secure password sharing across your team.

Why it matters: Password reuse is still one of the most common ways businesses get breached. When one service gets hacked (and they all do eventually), attackers try those credentials everywhere else.

Options:

• 1Password Business - ~$11/user/month
• Bitwarden Teams - ~$5/user/month
• Dashlane Business - ~$10/user/month

The reality check: The tool itself is the easy part. Getting your team to actually use it requires training, persistence, and leading by example. Budget time for rollout, not just the subscription.

3. DNS Filtering

What it does: Blocks connections to known malicious websites at the network level. If someone clicks a phishing link, the connection is stopped before it reaches the bad site.

Why it matters: It’s a safety net for human error. We all click things we shouldn’t sometimes. DNS filtering catches a lot of those mistakes before they become incidents.

Options:

• Cloudflare Gateway - Free for up to 50 users
• Cisco Umbrella - Starts around $3/user/month
• DNSFilter - Around $1.50/user/month

The reality check: This is genuinely one of the best value security tools available. Cloudflare’s free tier is sufficient for most small businesses. You just need to point your network’s DNS to their servers and configure some basic policies.

Takes about 30 minutes to set up. Protects against entire categories of attacks.

4. Email Security Gateway

What it does: Filters incoming email for phishing, malware, and spam before it reaches your users. More sophisticated analysis than the built-in filtering in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Why it matters: Email is still the primary attack vector for most businesses. The built-in filtering is decent but misses plenty. A dedicated gateway catches more.

Options:

• Mimecast - Starts around $5/user/month
• Proofpoint Essentials - Around $3/user/month
• Barracuda Email Security - Around $3/user/month

The reality check: This is the one tool on the list that’s genuinely optional for small businesses. Microsoft 365’s built-in protection has improved significantly. If budget is tight, focus on the others first.

But if you’re in a high-risk industry (legal, financial, healthcare) or you’re seeing lots of phishing getting through, the additional protection is worth it.

5. Backup Solution with Ransomware Protection

What it does: Backs up your data with features specifically designed to survive ransomware: immutable backups (can’t be modified once written), air-gapped storage, and anomaly detection.

Why it matters: Your regular backups might be vulnerable. Attackers know about backups and specifically target them. If your backup is just a network drive that’s always connected, ransomware will encrypt it too.

Options:

• Acronis Cyber Protect - Around $85/year per workstation
• Datto - Enterprise-grade, pricing varies
• Veeam + cloud storage - Around $5/month per workstation
• Microsoft 365 Backup (for cloud data) - Included in higher-tier plans

The reality check: The specific product matters less than the principles: 3 copies, 2 different media types, 1 offsite, 1 offline/immutable. Make sure your solution ticks those boxes.

And test your restores. A backup you can’t restore from isn’t a backup.

Honourable Mentions

A few other tools worth considering:

Security awareness training platforms (KnowBe4, Proofpoint Security Awareness) - Automated phishing simulations and training modules. Useful but not essential if you’re doing your own regular training.

SIEM/Log management (Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk) - Centralised logging and security monitoring. Overkill for most small businesses, but worth considering as you grow.

VPN for remote access - If your team connects remotely to on-premises resources, a properly configured VPN with MFA is essential. Many small businesses are fully cloud-based now and don’t need this.

What About Free Tools?

Some genuinely useful free options:

• Cloudflare Gateway - DNS filtering, free for small businesses
• Have I Been Pwned - Check if your email addresses appear in breaches
• ACSC’s free resources - The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes excellent guides and tools
• Built-in OS security features - Windows Firewall, BitLocker encryption, macOS FileVault - all free, all useful

Don’t overlook what you already have. Properly configuring the security features in Windows and Microsoft 365 gets you surprisingly far.

The Tool Trap

A warning: buying tools doesn’t make you secure. I’ve seen businesses with expensive security stacks that were configured poorly and ignored completely.

Before adding any new tool:

1. Are you fully using what you already have?
2. Do you have someone who’ll actually manage it?
3. What specific gap does this fill?

Five well-configured tools beats fifteen barely-used ones.

Where to Start

If you’re starting from scratch:

Month 1: Enable and configure Microsoft Defender (or your existing endpoint protection). Set up a password manager and start migrating passwords.

Month 2: Implement DNS filtering. Review and enable the security features in your email platform.

Month 3: Review your backup solution. Ensure you have immutable or offline backups. Test a restore.

By the end of three months, you’ll have dramatically improved your security posture with minimal disruption and reasonable costs.

No tool makes you invincible. But the right tools, properly used, make you a much harder target. And in cybersecurity, that’s often all the difference.