LA Hackers’ New Favorite Target? Small Businesses Who Think They’re ‘Too Small’ to Need These Services

The morning routine for most Los Angeles business owners follows a familiar rhythm. Grab coffee, scan headlines, check emails, and mentally run through the day’s priorities. Somewhere in that shuffle, a specific type of email lands in the inbox. It looks routine. A vendor invoice. A password expiration notice. A quick document review request from a familiar name.

One click changes everything.

By noon, the servers are encrypted. By afternoon, the phone calls start. Clients can’t access their files. Payroll is frozen. The receptionist is explaining to frustrated callers that systems are down and nobody knows when they’ll be back.

This isn’t a hypothetical scenario cooked up to sell security services. This is what happened to a boutique law firm in Downtown Los Angeles last year. They thought they were too small to attract attention. They thought hackers only went after the big players. They thought their decade-old server and “good enough” antivirus would protect them.

They thought wrong.

The “Too Small” Myth Is Costing LA Businesses Millions

Here is what Los Angeles hackers actually look for: the path of least resistance. Fortune 500 companies pour millions into cybersecurity. They have teams of experts, around-the-clock monitoring, and incident response plans they drill twice a year.

Small businesses? They have a part-time IT guy who stops by when things break.

That asymmetry creates opportunity. And hackers are exploiting it at an alarming rate. Cyberattacks on California small and midsize businesses surged 67 percent this year alone . Not because hackers suddenly developed a grudge against mom-and-pop shops. Because small businesses are easier to crack.

The average breach now costs California businesses $2.1 million . For a 25-person design studio in Santa Monica or a family-owned restaurant group in Glendale, that number isn’t just bad news. It’s extinction-level.

Yet only three in ten California businesses are actually prepared for an attack . The rest are running on hope.

I asked Juan Turcios, President and CEO of IT Training & Consulting, Inc., about this disconnect.

“Business owners tell me all the time they can’t afford to hire a security team or buy expensive equipment,” he said. “What they don’t realize is they can’t afford not to. One successful attack costs more than a decade of managed services. By the time they call us, it’s usually too late.”

Why Los Angeles Has Become a Hunting Ground

Los Angeles presents a perfect storm for cybercriminals. The economy runs on small businesses, creative agencies, medical practices, law firms, restaurants, and specialty retailers. These businesses generate real revenue and hold valuable data. But they rarely employ dedicated security staff.

A recent report found that fewer than half of Los Angeles small and midsize businesses employ a single full-time security professional . That leaves gaping holes in even basic protections.

The Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report revealed that 51 percent of small business breaches now originate in the supply chain . Think about what that means. When a hacker compromises a small vendor, they can use that access to reach larger targets. Your business becomes the stepping stone.

This dynamic has fundamentally changed who gets attacked and why. It is no longer about the size of your company. It is about who you connect to.

A Local Example Hitting Close to Home

Consider what happened to Kokomo Solutions, a vendor serving the Los Angeles Unified School District. In December 2024, hackers breached their network . The company waited nearly eight months to notify victims. Student data, telehealth records, and anonymous safety reporting systems were potentially exposed .

This was not a giant corporation. This was a service provider that thought they had their systems locked down. The breach affected thousands of LAUSD students and families .

Or look at Stiiizy, the popular Los Angeles-based cannabis company. In late 2024, a ransomware group called Everest gained access to their systems. The attackers claimed to have stolen data on more than 420,000 customers. Names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, passport photos, medical cannabis cards . Four retail locations were hit. Two in San Francisco, one in Alameda, one in Modesto .

When Stiiizy refused to pay the ransom, the hackers leaked the data .

These are not abstract cautionary tales. These are Los Angeles businesses that believed their security was sufficient.

What Hackers Actually Want From Small Businesses

The average business owner imagines hackers as shadowy figures after credit card numbers or bank account passwords. Sometimes that is true. But modern attacks go much deeper.

Business email compromise alone accounted for $2.77 billion in losses according to the FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report . These scams trick employees into wiring money to fraudulent accounts. They impersonate executives, vendors, or real estate agents. They exploit trust and haste.

Phishing and spoofing generated nearly 200,000 complaints . These are the entry points. One careless click opens the door.

Ransomware complaints topped 3,100 . But here is what the FBI notes: those figures only represent reported direct losses. They do not include downtime, legal fees, reputation damage, or lost clients .

The total damage? $16.6 billion in reported losses for 2024, a 33 percent jump from the previous year . Over 859,000 complaints. More than 2,300 every single day .

Mastercard surveyed 5,000 small businesses across four continents. They found that 46 percent had already been hit by a cyberattack. Almost one in five of those were forced to shut down or file for bankruptcy as a result .

The Hidden Costs Hitting LA Businesses

When ransomware hits a small company, the ransom demand is rarely the biggest expense. The downtime is what kills you.

IBM data shows that average ransomware downtime for small and midsize businesses exceeded 19 days in 2025 . Can your business survive nearly three weeks of zero revenue? No payroll going out. No client billing coming in. No access to project files or customer histories.

Datto estimates that every ransomware outage costs U.S. firms about $126,000 in downtime alone . For a business operating on thin margins, that wipes out six months of profit in one stroke.

Then there is the reputational damage. Clients do not want to work with companies that lose data. When a Glendale medical clinic exposed 8,000 patient records, they faced HIPAA fines, a class-action lawsuit, and a mass exodus of patients . The trust took years to build and collapsed in weeks.

The Human Factor Cannot Be Ignored

According to the 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 74 percent of all breaches involve human error or credential misuse . Not sophisticated hacking techniques. Not zero-day exploits. Just people making mistakes.

Employees click phishing links. They reuse passwords across multiple accounts. They paste sensitive data into AI tools without thinking about security implications .

This is why buying more expensive firewalls and antivirus software only gets you so far. The human firewall matters more. But only a quarter of small business owners feel confident teaching their teams how to stay safe online .

What “Being Ready” Actually Looks Like

The businesses that weather attacks successfully share common characteristics. They do not rely on hope. They build layered defenses.

Let me break down what that means for a typical Los Angeles business.

First, network monitoring. Not the kind where someone checks logs once a week. Twenty-four-seven monitoring with real humans paying attention. When a breach attempt happens at 2 a.m., someone needs to catch it before the malware deploys.

“Good IT support isn’t just fixing issues, it’s anticipating them,” says Abner Navarro, Network Support Specialist at ITTC. “We see things going wrong before our clients even know there’s a problem. That’s the whole point of proactive monitoring.”

Second, immutable backups. Ransomware attacks increasingly target backup files. If your backups sit on the same network as your production systems, the hackers will encrypt those too. Immutable backups cannot be altered or deleted. When an attack hits, you wipe the compromised systems and restore clean data in hours, not weeks .

Third, employee training that actually sticks. Not a boring video people click through while answering emails. Real simulated phishing campaigns that test employees monthly. Clear protocols for verifying wire transfer requests. Password managers that make strong credentials painless .

Fourth, endpoint protection. Every device that connects to your network becomes a potential entry point. Laptops, phones, tablets, point-of-sale systems. They all need active defense.

Fifth, patch management. Hackers love known vulnerabilities. They scan constantly for unpatched systems. When a restaurant chain used the same default password across all locations, they got breached at every single store . Regular patching closes those doors.

The Numbers Tell the Story

A 50-person Los Angeles firm trying to build this in-house faces a stark math problem. Hiring one security analyst costs around $132,000 annually. Adding a 24/7 security operations center pushes costs over $160,000. Security software, log retention, and monitoring tools add tens of thousands more .

The total first-year cost for a do-it-yourself approach runs approximately $333,000 .

Outsourcing these functions to a managed services provider costs a fraction of that. Same protections. Same 24/7 monitoring. Same peace of mind. Without the six-figure payroll hit.

Why LA Businesses Stay Vulnerable Despite the Risks

The psychology here matters. Business owners suffer from what researchers call positivity bias or the Pollyanna Principle . People naturally overestimate positive outcomes and underestimate risks. It feels better to believe you are not a target than to confront the possibility that you are.

This blind spot proves incredibly profitable for hackers.

Compounding the problem, 73 percent of small business owners identify employee awareness as their top cybersecurity challenge . They know their teams are the weak link. They just do not know how to fix it.

Some vendors make the situation worse by pushing complex tools without adequate support. Businesses buy expensive equipment, install it badly, and end up with gaps in coverage they do not even recognize.

The CrowdStrike outage in July 2024 offered a dramatic example of how even well-intentioned updates can cause chaos. A routine configuration update caused 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide to crash, disrupting airlines, hospitals, and banking systems . Not an attack. Just a faulty patch that passed automated validation. If that can happen to a major security vendor, imagine the risks facing businesses with no dedicated IT staff.

How ITTC Approaches Protection for LA Businesses

IT Training & Consulting, Inc. has spent years working with Los Angeles companies across every industry. We have seen the attacks that succeed and the defenses that stop them. Our approach combines technology with human judgment.

We start with network assessments. Not to sell equipment, but to understand where the real vulnerabilities live. Many clients discover problems they never knew existed. Open cloud buckets. Stale admin accounts. Default passwords on critical systems .

From there, we build layered protections tailored to each business. A medical practice faces different threats than a marketing agency. A restaurant group needs different solutions than a law firm. Cookie-cutter approaches miss too much.

Our team includes specialists across every domain. Abbas Arif handles full-stack development and web security. Abner Navarro and Bilal Arif manage network support and endpoint protection. Nestor Turcios and Jerry Duque handle field deployments and on-site troubleshooting. Juan Alvarez brings software engineering expertise to complex integrations. Stanley Ung manages databases and data protection.

This depth matters because modern attacks rarely follow predictable paths. They exploit whatever gap exists.

For businesses without internal IT resources, we function as an extension of the team. Monthly support subscriptions cover monitoring, patching, and help desk access. Hourly options exist for companies that prefer a lighter touch. Project-based engagements tackle specific initiatives like cloud migrations or security overhauls.

The common thread across all these approaches is simplicity. Business owners should focus on running their companies, not wrestling with technology.

Practical Steps You Can Take This Week

You do not need to overhaul everything at once. But taking action matters more than waiting for the perfect solution.

Review your backup strategy. When was the last time you tested a restoration? Do your backups sit on the same network as your production data? If the answer to either question is uncertain, start here.

Enable multi-factor authentication everywhere. Email, banking, vendor portals, accounting software. Any service that offers MFA should have it turned on. This single step blocks the vast majority of credential-based attacks.

Talk to your team about phishing. Not in a scolding way. In a collaborative way. Make it safe for people to report suspicious emails without fear of punishment. Create a simple reporting process. Celebrate catches.

Look at your vendor connections. If you connect to larger partners, ask what security requirements they expect. Many enterprise clients now audit their small business vendors. Getting ahead of those requests beats scrambling to respond.

Call someone who does this daily. A thirty-minute conversation with a professional often reveals gaps you never considered. Most providers, including ITTC, offer initial consultations without pressure or sales pitches.

The Real Question Is Not If but When

I have worked with enough Los Angeles business owners to know how capable and resilient this community is. The same energy that builds companies from nothing can absolutely secure them against modern threats.

The challenge is timing. Attackers move fast. They adapt constantly. They share techniques across global networks and launch thousands of attempts simultaneously.

Staying ahead requires partnership with people who track these developments full time. Not because business owners are incapable. Because nobody can master everything. You focus on your clients, your products, your team. Let someone else focus on the hackers.

The companies that survive attacks share one defining characteristic: they prepared before anything happened. They did not wait for a breach to validate their fears. They built resilience into their operations and moved forward with confidence.

That confidence is available to any business willing to take the first step.

Don’t Let Your Business Become the Next Headline

The Los Angeles companies that thought they were “too small” now populate cautionary tales. Their owners spend sleepless nights calculating losses and explaining to clients why their data is circulating on dark web forums. Their employees scramble to find new jobs after payroll evaporates. Their reputations, built over years or decades, collapse in weeks.

None of them planned to become examples. They just never got around to building real defenses.

You have a choice right now. Keep hoping the hackers overlook you. Or take concrete steps to make their job harder.

The team at IT Training & Consulting, Inc. works with Los Angeles businesses every day to build practical, affordable protections. We understand local threats because we live and work here. We know what works because we have tested it across hundreds of companies.

If you are ready to stop hoping and start protecting, pick up the phone. Call (844) 804-4882 and ask for a conversation about your specific situation. No pressure. No jargon. Just straight talk about what your business needs and how to get there.

You can also reach out through the contact page at https://www.it-tc.com/contact-us/. Someone will respond quickly and connect you with the right person on our team.

The hackers are not waiting. Neither should you.