Running a small online business is very hectic at times because usually, you want to take on many clients to grow. In order for your business to be respectable and word of mouth to travel far, your systems have to be polished, fast and above all else, safe. Protecting any business, whether it’s in the real world or in cyberspace, whether it’s large or small, is a complex issue many entrepreneurs and business executives constantly think about. It’s a game of cat and mouse because there’s software that will detect and protect from a virus or suspicious malware, and software that counteracts that. The consequences of an external attack can be severe to catastrophic, and the damage is determined by the attacking software. Being unable to shield yourself from hostile infiltration, will cause the loss of valuable date both of your company and your clients. Therefore, having the correct security protocols in place can make or break your small business.
Training employees
Once upon a time, your business was purely an idea in your mind, but you’re now in a position where you’ve hired the right staff, who are on board with your vision and making things happen. The people of a business are like the lifeblood, without them, no one person can run a business on their own. It should be a critical part of your daily routine, to make sure, your staff is adhering to your company standards revolving around security. Teach employees which applications you use and the ones you avoid or are prohibited. Various apps and online software have bad reputations which are relevant to all kinds of businesses, so keep yourself up-to-date with the news. Require that each employee have a strong password to their account and that they do not inform anyone; even their colleagues. Educate your staff to not open suspicious emails, whether they’re from internal or external communications.
Double and triple up
Handling sensitive, confidential and powerful client data is a delicate task that is crucial to the success of your business. You don’t want to break the trust of your clients by either losing the data, mixing it up, or deleting it by mistake. Having to re-ask for the same data which has already been supplied, will be embarrassing and potentially cause you to lose that customer’s business. There are certain small business backup solutions, which you should venture into that is easily accessible and yet a cyber fortress. Making a backup or even duplicating your data via a cloud service, shields loss of total data by a hard drive failure. You can save, documents, data sheets, videos and pretty much anything on a server network that has layers of security walls that section off data columns, so no one successful attack is fatal.
Consume knowledge
Keeping one step ahead of the enemy who wishes to ruin your business, is a persistent mission you must undertake yourself. Read up on the latest news articles about the evolution of cybercrime, especially new information which is relevant to online businesses. There are teams of hackers and malware code developers, whose sole job is to break in and steal data from clients and businesses alike.
Without a steely determination to protect the data you receive and collect, customers won’t feel safe enough to commit to giving you their business. Just like you wouldn’t trust a bank which had been robbed frequently, you wouldn’t trust an online business, which couldn’t take care of your personal information. It all starts with having the correct protocols, highly trained staff, and having multiple clones of the same data, hovering around a protected cloud.
