Security Tools for the SMB and SME Segments

Modern small and medium businesses (SMBs) operate with limited staff and budgets. Today's business environment requires businesses to do more with less. Businesses also have information that they need to protect. This protection is either mandated by law (HIPAA), industry requirements (PCI) or best practices (NIST). What are the recommended policies and tools an SMB should have in place to provide adequate and responsible information security? What tools should an SMB concentrate their time, effort and money towards? Should these tools be network-based tools, monitoring both inline and spanned traffic? Should these tools be end point tools that provide the same functionality and minimize the network tool components? Or should there be a mix of tools? Are certain tools required on end points, in the network or both? What are an SMB's regulatory requirements and how does this affect the choice in tools? These are the difficult questions that require thoughtful, concise and researched guidance.