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Four Experts To Outsource With Today

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Outsourcing|Four Experts To Outsource With TodayFor some employers, outsourcing is a bad word! It’s considered to be something that reduces costs because things are going wrong and savings are a must. The thing is, outsourcing is so much more than that. Outsourcing helps your business to improve productivity and bring better profits to your business over time.

You can pretty much outsource anything in your business, and if it enhanced employee safety, all the better. You can look at https://employeradvantage.com/workplace-safety/ for information about how to keep people as safe as possible. With the right outsourcing help, you can do so much more with your business and take it to the next level. With this in mind, here are four things you can outsource today.

  1. Cybersecurity. With the world of online security being at risk, you need to protect your business. Choose to update the way that you look after your data and your security, and you can guarantee that you will always have someone keeping an eye on your information. Online information is always at risk and you need to have an IT security strategy that’s on point. This can be the best option for your business to be a success and you will keep your customer information safe at the same time.
  2. SEO. It’s a big piece of the business puzzle, and sometimes it requires more than one person or one team in your business to make it work. You need SEO for your website to work, but not everyone understands what SEO is or what it means. With outsourced SEO, these experts don’t have to be on the payroll to get it right. You can hire people in on a project by project basis and have the experts holding your team together to get through it. SEO will improve the way that your website works – so, why wouldn’t you go for it?
  3. Customer Service. Your business has customers and for them to feel wanted and needed, you need to have professionals to make them feel that way. You can’t spend all your time on the phone to your customers, so you need to outource this service. When you do this, you have people supporting and listening to your customers.
  4. Payroll. Paying invoices, paying staff and even paying yourself can get complicated. By choosing to outsource your payroll, you can pay someone to come in once a month or once every tax season and get it done without mistakes. You may choose to hire an expert to pay your employees or manage your invoices, and it would be a smart choice for your business. You need to keep up with the changing and complex tax laws, and you can only do that if you have an expert in finance working with you. When you outsource your finances, you are trusting someone who knows what they are doing to look after your business properly. You will be impressed by how much an expert can save your business when your finances are managed properly.

The Rise of Alternative Online Businesses

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Online Businesses|The Rise of Alternative Online Businesses The internet has become part of our society in just about every possible way, and it has certainly revolutionized the way we do business. No matter the sector, buying, trading, and selling goes on every day with new companies and products emerging all the time.

The result is an incredibly competitive marketplace which often feels saturated with small, medium, and large organizations vying for visibility.

Surely, then, there is no more room for another online business? Not so. The truth is that there will always be room for more online businesses if there are entrepreneurs coming up with alternative business concepts and innovative services/products.

To inspire you on your journey to starting your own online business, this article explores the alternative ones which have risen to success in recent years.

Cyber Security

The internet is a wonderful entity, but it can also be dangerous if we are not careful. There are cybercriminals and hackers working all the time to try and exploit individuals and organizations by accessing sensitive information. This has brought about a need for cybersecurity professionals who are essentially ethical hackers. A business will ask them to try and hack into their system so that they can identify their weaknesses before a hacker with criminal intent finds them.

Subscription services

In a world where we do a lot of our shopping online, we have replaced the experience of physically visiting a store to buy something and walking out with our new purchases. Instead, we experience a different excitement of clicking a few buttons and waiting for the delivery.

With subscription services, people sign up to receive a box of products through the mail on a monthly or quarterly basis. The products might be items they use all the time like vaping juices from ZampleBox — in which case, the service offers convenience and value for money — or luxury items, product samples, or mystery products.

Dropshipping and affiliate marketing

If you do not have the space to store stock but are interested in retail, a dropshipping business could be perfect. In this scenario, you create a website to sell products, but you do not stock the product. When an order is placed with you, you send this information to another company, either a stockist or manufacturer, who is responsible for storing, packing, and distributing the stock.

With affiliate marketing you create websites, posts on social media, and other digital marketing campaigns which promote another brand’s products or service. When you bring in a sale for the brand, you earn commission.

Influencer marketing

An increasingly popular career path is influencer marketing. People with a substantial social media following are paid to try, wear, review, and recommend products to their audience. Brands will approach influencers whose audience includes their target customers and pay them for their endorsement.

Creating Apps

If you are technologically minded, creating apps and games can be a very lucrative business. When your app is designed you can promote it via blogs, social media, and other digital marketing techniques to encourage people to download the app. Some app creators charge for the initial download, others offer the app for free but then make money via in-game purchases and/or selling advertising space to other brands.

How To Safeguard Your Company Data

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Safeguard Your Company DataIt doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, you will need to take steps to safeguard your company data, and that of your customers, from cybercrime and data loss. Losing important business information or having it stolen by a hacker could easily spell the end of your enterprise altogether, and it will certainly have a negative impact on your reputation. Therefore, it makes sense to put in safeguarding measures to protect the information and yourself. Here are some ways to do it.

Back Up

Backing up your information is simple and effective. Although it won’t protect against an attack by a cybercriminal by itself, it will allow you to restore the potentially missing or corrupt information left in the hacker’s wake, or as a result of a system failure.

If you can restore the information then you can continue working, even if there are other problems that still need to be dealt with. Without a backup of your work, you may well lose everything and have no way of continuing your business at all.

The most important thing to remember about making backups is that you will need to use a reliable external source to do it. There is no point in backing up your information to another computer on the same system; this is not going to keep it safe. Ideally you should use the cloud as not only will the information be protected but you can access it from anywhere – this is perfect if you are unable to get to your office or if there was a fire, for example, that destroyed your computing equipment.

Use A Firewall

A firewall will give you an extra line of defence against cyberattack. It works as a barrier against any malicious software that you may have inadvertently downloaded. This barrier, when correctly installed, will ensure that the virus cannot reach the more vulnerable and important parts of your computing system, blocking it completely.

The idea is a simple one, but there are many different types of firewall and it can become confusing and even overwhelming when you start to look more deeply into it. Because of this, it is best to have IT services Birmingham find the right firewall for you and install it – that way you know you are protected.

Password Protection

It is possible to set passwords on some programs such as Adobe Acrobat and the Microsoft Office suite. This adds an extra layer of security so that only those who have the password are able to open the document.

You can even password protect entire folders and networks if you want to and feel that this would be a useful protective measure that will safeguard your company data. When you are choosing a password, it must be something unique that cannot be guessed easily; never use phone numbers or birthdates or names. For the best password, you should use a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Although this will be harder to remember, it will also be harder to guess, so your information will be much safer.

Keeping Your Business Safe: A Guide

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |keep your business safe|Keeping Your Business Safe: A GuideThere are a number of online threats that you can experience while running your business, and while some can be minor, some can be so catastrophic that it results in business closure. Building up a solid business idea and turning it into a profit-turning organization takes hard work and dedication, and the idea that it can fail due to someone else’s actions is devastating. However, it is a very real situation many businesses find themselves in, and all because they didn’t take online security seriously.

Just because you are a small business, doesn’t mean that you aren’t a target for online hackers. Yes, hackers will target big businesses, but as you are less likely to have viable security solutions in place, this is exactly why people will also target small businesses such as yours too. Fortunately, some solutions can help keep your business safe from online threats, and we will explore them in more detail here.

Secure your network

Whether you use your computers every day or once in a while, you still need to ensure that your network is secure. Start by encrypting your wireless access points, as this is a great way for hackers to get into your system and steal sensitive data. Then set about changing the name of your wireless network to something that doesn’t announce to the world that it belongs to you. Instead, make sure to use something more inconspicuous that will make it harder for the hacker to find out your location or business name.

Make this a private network, and ensure like everything you change the password regularly.

Test your company’s defenses

It is one thing to secure your network, but in circumstances where you want to ensure safety to the finest degree, you need to test how good this defense actually is. By carrying out penetration testing, you can test your protection against a number of different threats that hackers will attempt in an effort to steal your data. It will highlight any vulnerabilities and weaknesses within the system and what needs to be done to rectify it.

Antivirus software

One of the best ways to ensure your business is safe is to install the right antivirus software on every single device that enters the company before it joins your network. If a device that an employee has bought into work doesn’t have the right security defenses in play, you are at risk of a data breach.

Train your staff

Many problems regarding company data are the result of uneducated staff. Companies that don’t train their staff are at more risk of experiencing breaches. Therefore, you should make it mandatory training every year for your staff to learn more about cybersecurity and what they can do to maintain the safety of your business.

Educate them on how to spot potential security issues, such as phishing emails, but also reinforce how serious it is to uphold. As cybercriminals improve their techniques and strategies, you need to also improve your training. This is why it is recommended to carry out the training regularly and keep it relevant to on-going security issues.

What your employees can do to reduce cybersecurity risk

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | Cybersecurity | Cyber security | What your employees can do to reduce cybersecurity riskNo longer just the responsibility of the IT department, cybersecurity is something that all employees have a vital role in. From making smarter decisions in the workplace to understanding how to spot common attacks, employees can do much to combat cybercrime in all of its forms. Here we take a look at the things that your employees can do to help keep your business secure.

Install regular software updates

It is unfortunately the case that many employees leave their computer turned on at all times – even when they’re out of the office. The convenience of having all windows and browsers tabs open when they return to work is offset by one a major cybersecurity weakness – computers with out-of-date operating systems and applications.

When an employee does not regularly turn off a computer it can leave the system without critical updates that are only installed when it is shut down. These updates fix vulnerabilities and weaknesses that could be exploited by cybercriminals. This is why it is vital that employees shut down their computers regularly.

Understand the dangers of phishing attacks

Phishing is still a major problem. We have all seen a phishing email; sent from a fake account and designed to look like a legitimate sender. The email will attempt to trick you into clicking a link and being sent to a duplicate version of a genuine site, with the exception that when you enter your login details, these will be harvested by criminals.

You might think you know how to spot a phishing scam – but phishing is becoming more sophisticated in 2020. A rise in deepfake voice phishing could see employees tricked into sending money to scammers or revealing sensitive information after getting voice messages and calls that sound like they are from senior executives.

It is important to understand these risks in order to be able to combat them.

Broaden their cybersecurity awareness

It is important for your employees to stay up to date with the latest tactics and techniques being used by cybercriminals. Providing employees with regularly updated training can be hugely valuable in boosting their knowledge and understanding. Employees with good cybersecurity skills and knowledge make a valuable line of defence against cybercrime.

One way that you can assess the cyber maturity of your employees is by engaging a cyber security company to carry out a pentest of the organisation. For example, this could take the form of a simulated phishing attack to see if any of your employees give out their log-in credentials.

Work closely with the IT department

It is important that employees should avoid any instances of “shadow IT”. Shadow IT is the term for any application or software that is installed on an employee’s computer without the knowledge and consent of the IT team.

Going through the process of having a piece of software signed off and approved can be frustrating and time consuming, but failing to do so can lead an employee to download software containing a vulnerability which can be exploited by hackers. Or which isn’t updated in the future by the IT team when known issues are identified in the software.

Be willing to invest in enhanced security tools like privileged access management, so system users are provided with different levels of access. This ensures greater control and, therefore, security.

Set strong passwords

Experts disagree as to whether employees should change their passwords on a regular basis. On one hand, changing passwords can be an important way to limit the risk of stolen passwords being used to access accounts. But on the other hand, employees being forced to remember too many different passwords will often result in them instead using unsafe workarounds.

It can be agreed, however, that the use of weak and commonly-used passwords is to be avoided. According to cybersecurity specialists, businesses can prevent staff from setting common passwords by enforcing rules and complexity such as the use of special characters.


Follow good cybersecurity practice away from the office

It is important if an employee works from home or remotely, that they should follow good cybersecurity practice when they do so. Any time that an employee accesses company data they should do so in an environment that is as secure as the environment in their workplace. Their remote computer should have cybersecurity measures just as powerful as those in the office – otherwise they are making themselves an easy target. For example, using public Wi-Fi is a major security concern.

Backup data regularly

Ransomware is still a problem, and losing access to business-critical data can be a major problem for any company. That is why it is vital that employees should use their company’s corporate network where possible as this is likely to be backed up regularly by the IT team. However, if staff do store data locally then they need to back up their data on a regular basis – ensuring that it is saved somewhere that would not be compromised in the event of a criminal attack.

Final thoughts

It is important that employees understand cybersecurity best practice so that they can act in accordance with it. Informed staff can be a powerful line of defense against cybercriminals.