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Where Kansas City SMBs Should Focus Their IT Budgets
By David Stidham, Operations Manager at Cenetric
Your IT budget can be spent in a million different ways, or at least it seems like that sometimes. Deciding where to invest your tech spend is difficult, especially when you likely have many competing priorities.
In 2026, smaller companies are largely boosting or maintaining their budgets to protect their systems and data and create more productive workflows. In one survey, 54% of IT leaders at companies with 100-999 employees said their budgets were increasing. (At companies with 1-99 employees, it was slightly lower at 42%.)
Companies spending this increased budget on:
- 54% are updating outdated IT infrastructures
- 53% are investing in strategic projects to “enable upside opportunities, deliver operational efficiencies, or manage risk.”
- 48% are spending on security
- 46% are supporting AI initiatives
Where are you spending on IT this year? While we know you probably have a list a mile long, we recommend focusing on protecting your cybersecurity first. Even if you need more server capacity or new devices for your team, the foundation of it all is security. Any decisions you make about software, hardware or network purchases all influence your cybersecurity, so let’s start there.
Increases in ransomware and other threats
As technology becomes more advanced, unfortunately so do cyberattacks that exploit customer and business data. These incidents are costly and wreak havoc on your business — IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach 2025 study showed that 86% of businesses that experienced a data breach also experienced operational disruption. Data breaches involving shadow AI (unauthorized AI use by employees) had an even bigger impact: 44% of those businesses saw their data compromised and 23% experienced reputational damage.
From ransomware to quishing to business email compromise, it’s getting easier than ever for cyber criminals to attack faster and be more persuasive as they do.
Growing businesses can be especially vulnerable because bad actors guess (often correctly) that they’ll have less sophisticated protection in place. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach
Investigations Report showed that businesses with under 1,000 employees were hit with ransomware attacks far more often than large companies. Of all the data breaches they experienced, ransomware accounted for 39% of the breaches at large companies but a staggering 88% for SMBs.
Ransomware is no joke and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, prompting smaller businesses with fewer protections to pay costly ransoms just to get their business back to normal. The FBI warns against paying, however, because it’s unlikely to result in the return of your data and perpetuates the practice. A 2025 study by Hiscox revealed that only 60% of businesses that paid a ransom got some or all of their data back.
The importance of cybersecurity
Because these cyber attacks have grown increasingly common, cybersecurity should be a top priority for your business. Making room in your IT budget for an investment in top-notch cybersecurity can help you to avoid being the target of cyberattacks.
One of the best solutions to ensure you have proper cybersecurity measures implemented on your systems is to partner with a managed service provider that offers advanced cybersecurity services.
At Cenetric, we offer 24/7 system monitoring and support, which means we can detect threats and patch vulnerabilities before they cause major issues. We can also help you if you’ve already suffered an attack and need to recover and prevent another incident.
Cenetric can help you figure out your IT spend
Whether you want to outsource your IT budget and enjoy fully managed IT support or just want the advice of an experienced team on how you should allocate your tech spend, Cenetric has the expertise to point you in the right direction.
If you need guidance to improve any aspect of your IT operations in Kansas City, we’re here to help. Tell us about your challenges and we’ll be in touch to get started right away.