Business owners hardly need any more reasons for sleepless nights. You’ll know that there’s always something that you’re worrying about, always another cause for concern. Are you going to be able to make that deadline? Is that investor going to make good on their promises and deliver the capital that you need? What happens if the cost of living goes up again? It’s part of the job when you run a business, but that doesn’t make it any easier, does it?
However, security and safety are two things that you’ll always need to keep a close eye on when you run your own company. It seemed like cybercrime was never going to leave the front pages for a while there. But it hasn’t gone away just because it doesn’t make the headlines as much. And there’s still an awful lot of precariousness in the market. It might only take a minor error to allow your competitors to pull ahead of you.
Educate Your Team On Cybersecurity
You might know all the essential cybersecurity tips and tricks. You might be confident that you’re doing everything that you need to in order to protect your information and your finances. But that doesn’t make a blind bit of difference if the people working for you are making glaring errors. There have been plenty of stories about how cybercriminals have found their way in because of simple password mistakes, for example.
It’s your responsibility as their employer to ensure that they have the knowledge and the tools that they need to work safely and securely. Think about bringing in an IT or cybersecurity expert to give your team a seminar on the best security practices.
Encourage them to use random password generators for their work accounts, and to run virus scans regularly on their work computers. Think about paying for a good antivirus and cybersecurity software for your team if they’re still working from home.
Find Software That Works For Your Business
Following on from the point above, it’s important to factor good security software into your budget. It’s understandable that many business owners are reluctant to open their wallets for anything at the moment.
Prices keep going up and up, and profit margins keep getting smaller and smaller. But it’s important to take advantage of new software that can help with the specific challenges that your business faces. For example, you can’t just rely on a standard virus scan if you’re working in tech development.
Now, a lot of software businesses wait until their applications are complete before they start running security tests. It’s easy to understand why, but this is hardly the most efficient way of doing things.
Why not find a security testing solution that will be up and running throughout the development process? ForAllSecure offers software that integrates layers of security testing into continuous workflows. This allows you and your team to work more efficiently and create more time to focus on the important stuff.
Make Your Customers And Clients Feel Safe And Heard
It’s one thing to go the extra mile to maximize security and safety in your business. But why not make it part of your brand? Business owners are not the only ones who have heard horror stories about cybercrime over the last couple of years.
There have been so many people who have been scammed or robbed, and everyone is very anxious about whether the companies that they are using and working with are being responsible.
Your stance on this threat could be a valuable way to stand out from the competition. For example, if you are taking payments directly from your customers and clients on your website, show them that you offer a secure payment platform. You could have a section on your site that explains that you are aware of how serious this issue is and the steps that you’re taking to address it.
AdFixus also adds that something as simple as using first-party cookies instead of third-party cookies can already go a long way in keeping your customers’ privacy.
Be Aware Of What’s Going On Out Of The Office
It’s always easier to make sure that everything is secure when you work from a central office. But the fact is that a lot of businesses are either working remotely completely these days or have gone hybrid. You might want to think about what devices your employees are using to get their work done, and whether you want to limit the information that they have access to when they are not using a machine that you have approved and secured. But it’s not just about your staff.
To help strengthen in-person security, you might want to enforce better security measures at the entrance to your business. From security guards on the doors to photo ID cards, these are all measures to take as a business to ensure your employee’s safety remains a priority.
Talk to any third parties that you’re working with about the cybersecurity measures that they’re taking. It would be incredibly frustrating to have gone to all this effort to give your clients security only for it all to go wrong when you hand the data over to someone else.
