For resource-strapped small and midsize businesses, staring down the gargantuan and ever-evolving cybersecurity threats might make them feel like David staring down Goliath.

The good news is, like David’s expert use of a slingshot to defeat his towering foe, SMBs can still use the limited money and tools at their disposal to mount a respectable defense, according to experts in both cybersecurity and finance.

Without large amounts of cash to spend on a robust cyber program or the ability to hire an army of internal experts, smaller firms tend to think of cybersecurity as “an afterthought,” Travis Wong, VP of customer engagement at cyber risk company Resilience, told CFO Brew. The truth is, threat actors will target any organization, regardless of size, if they see opportunity, he said.

“What we recommend, and what we encourage all our clients to recognize, is that cyber risk isn’t just an IT risk. It is a holistic business risk,” Wong said. Those who fail to view cyber as an enterprise risk, he added, “may be underestimating the overall impact that a cyber event could have on their ability to sustain business and satisfy their customers’ needs.”

Spend wisely. For SMBs, putting together a comprehensive cybersecurity program might feel like an impossible task given their limited budgets. But there are steps they can take to maximize their investment, experts said.

For more on building an effective cybersecurity program on a limited budget, click here.—AZ

When AI’s not being asked to write a last-minute wedding speech, it’s busy meeting its true potential by benefiting teams across just about every industry.

Finance and Accounting teams are being asked to do more with less these days, and AI is quickly becoming the hero it needs to transform complicated and fragmented workflows into automated, error-free processes.

Join Routable’s upcoming webinar at 1pm ET this Friday to discover how companies are leveraging AI to make life easier for their AP teams. Think practical applications like forensic accounting and risk monitoring, detecting anomalies in invoices, and more.

Routable knows their stuff when it comes to AI (heck, the Sam Altman invested in Routable’s most recent fundraising round).

Register to attend the webinar—you’ll be entered for a chance to win a pair of Apple AirPods Pro.

Workplace software platform monday.com was built with non-techies in mind. Its no-code, “building block” approach was designed to make it easy for anyone to build workflows. The model is paying off: The company now has more than 225,000 customers in 200 industries. It brought in 34% more revenue last quarter than it did in Q1 2023, and anticipates 29%–30% revenue growth in 2024.

Eliran Glazer has been CFO since 2021, joining the company just four months before it went public. Austin Hankwitz and Katie Perry, hosts of the Morning Brew podcast After Earnings, spoke with Glazer about how monday.com has been able to achieve such remarkable results, how he balances growth with efficiency, and more.

This summary has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the whole episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hankwitz: How do you balance adding more staff while also being cognizant of lingering macroeconomic uncertainties?

Glazer: We define what would be the strategy for us in three years and where we want to be. And then we go backward. We say, “Okay, in order to be where we want to be, what do we need to do today? What are the limitations that we have? What are the drivers that we can invest in in order to bring these KPIs?”

We build and we invest today, even at the price of not improving the bottom line the way we did until now. We understand that we have to build the growth engines for the future.

Click here to continue reading.—Courtney Vien

The cost of raising a child in the US is rising, and the lack of a strong social safety net makes the prospect of having a family harder than in other industrialized nations.

While new parents in some states are able to take paid leave after having a child, no such program exists at the federal level. High childcare costs make staying in the workforce untenable for some parents, and public funding intended to alleviate this burden remains unreliable.

In light of these challenges, some lawmakers believe the private sector needs to play a stronger role in supporting working parents. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a paid family and medical leave insurance program on these grounds in April. Echoing this argument, Tennessee State Senator Bo Watson said “government is not the solution” to the country’s childcare challenges during a speech at the Best Place for Working Parents (BP4WP) national summit in Nashville on May 9. The business community should be a key leader in implementing family-friendly policies, he posited.

Employers are responding to this call in different ways, from investing in onsite childcare to instituting smaller-scale benefits, such as flexible work policies and backup care. Still, some policymakers remain hopeful that the public sector will do more to support working families—especially at a time when restrictive reproductive policies may hamper Americans’ decision-making when it comes to having kids.

Click here to read HR Brew’s story on how companies can invest in working parents.—Courtney Vinopal

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