Scaling safely: 7 cybersecurity challenges every growing business must tackle

Rapid growth is great for revenue, but it also widens your attack surface, piles on regulatory tasks, and stretches already-thin security staff. 

For a growing enterprise, scaling up usually comes with piecing together disparate identity management solutions, and the high probability of them outgrowing those tools. 

In the previous reports in the Scaling Safely series, we analyzed how to grow your teams and tech without growing your risk and discussed maintaining long-term growth through essential security prioritization.

Both these stages in the life of an emerging enterprise bring a set of identity-centric cybersecurity challenges. Unosecur has been working with many emerging businesses and has been tracking several others. We have seen these common challenges appear again and again as startups move from seedfunding to Series A and beyond. 

Here’s what they mean, why they matter, and where to focus your fixes. 

1. Budget and talent gaps stall early security

Most early-stage companies rely on a single IT generalist or DevOps engineer instead of a full security team. Enterprise-grade identity tools look expensive when every dollar is earmarked for product features, making it hard to win executive buy-in for MFA, SSO, or external expertise. 

Quick win: Treat identity security spend as a cost-of-doing-business KPI, not a “nice to have,” and prioritise low-overhead SaaS tools that automate least-privilege out of the box.

2. Multi-cloud complexity drives identity sprawl

Fast movers often juggle AWS for core workloads, GCP for ML, Azure AD for SSO, and a dozen SaaS apps. Nearly half of surveyed firms already juggle 25+ identity systems: a recipe for forgotten accounts and inconsistent MFA. 

Quick win: Standardise around a unified identity fabric or broker that can discover, correlate, and baseline permissions across every cloud before sprawl becomes unmanageable.

3. Convenience culture versus robust protection

A “ship-fast” mindset clashes with security prompts and access request workflows. Identity policies often slow teams down. According to a World Economic Forum report on passwordless authentication, workers globally spend about 11 hours a year handling password entries or resets: time that costs a 15,000-employee company roughly $5.2 million in lost productivity.

Quick win: Roll out phishing-resistant MFA that supports passkeys or push-based logins: frictionless for users, far safer than SMS codes.

4. Missing processes create on-and-offboarding landmines

Startups often rely on shared spreadsheets or tribal knowledge to grant and revoke access. Without formal reviews, dormant admin accounts linger long after staff exit, opening a back door for attackers. 

Quick win: Automate joiner-mover-leaver workflows in your IdP, trigger periodic access recertification, and document everything from day one.

5. Third-party and machine identities expand risk

Contractors, CI/CD pipelines, and API keys multiply faster than full-time staff. A recent study by Entro found 97% of non-human identities carry excessive privilege and 71% are never rotated. 

Quick win: Inventory every service account, vault credentials, and rotate secrets automatically; enforce least privilege for contractors with time-bound, audited access.

6. Enterprise tools don’t fit startup realities

Many SSO, IGA, or PAM suites target Fortune 500 budgets and assume weeks of professional services. That leaves founders choosing between DIY scripts (risky) or deferring security (riskier). 

Quick win: Seek SMB-focused identity platforms that price per active user, deploy in hours, and integrate natively with your stack.

7. Evolving threats outpace lean defences

Attackers don’t wait for Series B. According to the 2025 SpyCloud Identity Exposure Report, 91% of organizations experienced an identity-related incident in the previous year. Sophisticated phishing kits, token theft, and deepfake scams hit lean teams the hardest. 

Quick win: Combine continuous identity monitoring with security-awareness sprints that train staff on the newest social-engineering tricks.

The Bottom line

Cybersecurity challenges do rise as your business grows, but they don’t have to spike. By automating least privilege, unifying identity data, and choosing right-sized tools, emerging enterprises can scale securely and confidently. 

A unified identity security platform is often the fastest, clearest path to enterprise-grade controls for a small security staff.

What the platform gets right

Treat the platform as your backbone and it can grow with you from 20 employees to 2,000 without forcing a rip-and-replace later on. Start laying that foundation today, and your future self (and investors) will thank you.

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