Black Friday is more than a shopping event—it’s a masterclass in distraction. While most people chase discounts on the latest smart gadgets, apps, and subscription trials, very few stop to ask the most important question: What are we quietly adding to our digital attack surface?

In a world where convenience is marketed as innovation, every new “smart” device or SaaS tool introduces risk. For small businesses and lean IT teams, the danger is not in the individual purchase—it’s in the unplanned sprawl of “cheap and easy” technology that slips into your environment without strategy or oversight.

Every Purchase Is a New Entry Point

That heavily discounted smart camera or collaboration app may look harmless, but each addition creates:

• A new data path you may not fully control
• Another vendor with potential access to your environment
• One more asset requiring patching, configuration, and monitoring

Left unmanaged, these micro-dependencies accumulate. Over time, they create blind spots—untracked devices, unpatched apps, unsupported tools—that attackers love to exploit.

The Small Business Challenge: Quiet Risk Creep

For many organizations, especially those without dedicated security teams, risk doesn’t arrive as a major system failure. It arrives quietly—through a holiday purchase plugged into the office network, a SaaS trial added to streamline someone’s workflow, or a “temporary” device that slowly becomes permanent.

The result?

• Shadow IT
• Supply chain exposure.
• And an attack surface you never intended to build.

Treat Black Friday Like a Technology Acquisition Cycle

Leaders should approach seasonal tech buying with the same discipline used for any formal procurement:

• Add it to your asset inventory if it touches business data or the network.
• Assign an owner responsible for configuration, updates, and lifecycle management.
• Verify basic security posture: MFA, logging, default passwords, data residency, and what the vendor collects or shares.
• Evaluate the vendor: If you wouldn’t trust them with your top client, don’t trust them with your network.

The real cost of technology isn’t the discount price—it’s the long-term risk and operational burden that comes with adding one more unsecured or unmanaged asset.

Smart Shopping Requires Smart Security

Buy what your organization needs. Just do it as a security decision, not simply a shopping decision. A deal is only truly a deal if it doesn’t quietly increase your cyber risk for years to come.

A Simple Step for Teams and Leaders

Before your staff plugs in any new Black Friday tech—at home or in the office—take ten minutes to decide:

• Who owns it?
• Where does it connect?
• How will it be secured?

If your organization doesn’t already have a simple checklist for approving new devices, apps, and subscriptions, consider this your sign to create one now—before the next “great deal” walks through the door.