Most of the security breaches that have made headlines over the course of the past year have involved major corporations in either retail or banking. Target and Home Depot have fallen victim to highly publicized incidents in the past 12 months, and most recently the JP Morgan/Chase breach may have affected 76 million households. But due to the organization's dealing with small businesses, roughly 7 million small business owners may also be at risk.

Small business owners often feel as if they aren't susceptible to security breaches due to their "unattractiveness" in the eyes of fraudsters. This is not the case. In fact, small businesses are often even more vulnerable to fraudulent activity, and according to the National Small Business Association, as many as 44 percent of all small businesses were attacked last year.

The biggest problem is that most small businesses don't think they will be breached, so they don't take proper steps to protect themselves. Even if they are aware of the potential for a breach, they don't understand the capabilities of fraudsters. Jeff Foresman, a consultant with Rook Security, an Indianapolis-based computer security company, discussed this with Fox Business. 

"They don't know what they don't know. They don't understand the sophistication of these attacks," Foresman said.

Small businesses must ensure they are PCI compliant, and if they are ignorant to the threats prevalent at their organization, they will fail to achieve PCI compliance. The best way for small businesses to maintain their compliance is to simplify the process. ControlScan, a prepaid service and Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) by the PCI Council, can help with this process.