For millions of Americans working as solopreneurs—business owners who are their own sole paid employees—protecting a business from cyberattacks is a personal responsibility that often falls entirely on one person. With more than 28 million small businesses in the U.S. falling into this category, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a new resource, "Small Business Cybersecurity: Non-Employer Firms" (NIST Cybersecurity White Paper 50), specifically to address this demographic. The guide is intended to help these individuals grasp cybersecurity basics and craft a strategy to reduce risk, acknowledging that solopreneurs are often busy and may lack specialized security knowledge.
The image illustrates the solopreneur demographic described in the article, who often manage business operations from home.
The new publication is a narrower, more accessible revision of a previous document, "Small Business Information Security: The Fundamentals" (NISTIR 7621). While the older version covered broader information security for businesses of various sizes, CSWP 50 focuses specifically on protecting digital systems from malicious attacks. It draws its guidelines from the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) but is written in lay language to ensure that those with no prior familiarity with the framework can still implement actionable steps. The guide aims to educate readers on how cybersecurity fits into a successful business plan, providing context and definitions for technical terms to keep the content approachable for non-experts.
To make the framework practical, the guide provides specific actions, such as maintaining updated software and performing regular data backups. For each action, it includes the rationale for the step, instructions on how to get started, and options for how to scale those security measures as the business grows. For example, it advises changing default passwords on networked devices like Wi-Fi routers—a common entry point for criminals—and suggests establishing formal onboarding procedures for new devices as the business expands. The document also includes practical tools like worksheets for inventorying at-risk assets and three hypothetical "use cases" involving a lawyer, an artisan, and a business consultant to help owners visualize their own security strategies. While NIST notes the guide is not a comprehensive solution for every possible scenario, it serves as a foundational starting point for solo owners to build a baseline of security.",