I’ve told the story before: four years ago, my wife and I were working together at a school. Until I got laid off.

Instead of looking for other teaching jobs, I tried my hand at self-employment. My wife saw what I was doing and envied me, so she quit too.

For a while, we operated entirely out of marketplaces like eBay and Etsy. But when we started our first website, our hosting company asked us a question.

Did we want the regular cheapo website, or did we want to pay a few extra bucks for an SSL certificate?

We were just broke little wannabe entrepreneurs at the time, so we took the cheapest option we could.

Besides, it’s not like a hacker would target a little local business, right?

Wrong.

While cyberattacks against small companies might not be as newsworthy as attacks against Target, Sony, or Equifax, they’re just as serious.

In October, Entrepreneur.com reported that cyber attacks against small businesses were actually becoming more common.

While there are a number of reasons behind this increase, the primary reason is because of lackluster web security.

Because attacks against small businesses don’t make headlines, small business owners don’t think they’re at risk. They don’t hear about it, so it might as well not be happening.

Many business owners also think that they don’t make enough money to be a target. What hacker is going to trouble themselves for a paltry $25,000?

But, if that $25k isn’t secured behind good web security, you might as well sit your data in a box on the curb.

So while you might be eager to skip that $50 expense, it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.