Shapero highlighted two policy issues that have a significant and ongoing impact on the IT SMB: national data breach notification reform and workforce development.

In his testimony, Shapero stated, "The majority of cyber attacks create exposure across state lines and are an area of serious concern. There are currently 47 state data breach notification (DBN) laws in place, imposing duplicative costs and an undue burden on SMBs. These issues are compounded in the context of the cloud due to the mobility of data. In a cloud environment, data travels across multiple jurisdictions adding more uncertainty for SMBs who may not have the resources to understand their DBN compliance obligations." 

Shapero stated that a national framework for DBN is called for to ensure good practices and encourage expansion of IT services across state lines. 

He also addressed the importance of workforce development to meet cyber security threats.

"Another issue that we face as small- and medium-sized businesses is the ability to recruit and retain in-house talent to help protect ourselves from cyber attacks.  However, there is a skills-gap issue that is affecting the IT community as a whole. There are approximately 250,000 open IT jobs in the U.S. at any given time. As the SMB community, not only are we competing with the rest of the world for this talent, we are competing against other larger U.S. companies with big names."