Reducing attack surface across applications and infrastructure: a practical guide for UK SMEs

Practical guide for UK SMEs on reducing attack surface: start with visibility and inventory, remove unused services/features and forgotten test systems, tighten authentication and admin access, harden infrastructure and restrict management paths, apply least-privilege and proper secrets handling, review third-party and cloud exposure, and bake secure defaults into change management. The article prioritises removing unnecessary exposure as the highest-value, low-effort risk reduction and includes a short FAQ and recommended first steps.