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How Can You Shield Your Small Business From Disaster?

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Small Business Protection|How Can You Shield Your Small Business From Disaster?In the early days of launching a small business, getting everything set up and running smoothly, trying to attract new customers and generate some revenue, security is an easy matter to forget about. In fact, it’s an easy matter to forget about in general, as it usually isn’t until something goes wrong that you may even notice the lack of it.

But if the current global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we never quite know what is around the corner. There is a need to be prepared though, and safeguard the business assets that you have built up so carefully. Life is full of uncertainties, and there’s nothing worse than watching everything you’ve worked so hard for get destroyed by a random twist of fate. While you can’t completely insulate yourself from every single eventuality, there are steps you can take to ensure that you have the right insight and contingency plans in place should the worst happen.

Get Protected Against Cyber Attacks

One of the biggest threats to small businesses is cyber-security. We live in a data-driven society now, and unfortunately the illegal exchange of some of those details is big business on the black market. If customer or employee details fall into the wrong hands, it’s very bad news. These details can be used in criminal activity and the repercussions can be severe. Businesses who fall victim to these types of attacks suffer a lot of damage – both because they may fall foul of data protection laws and can be prosecuted by the authorities, but also because of the reputational damage. Customers talk, and if they feel that you have not taken the right measures with their data, they’re unlikely to come back again. This goes double for digital businesses where there is a strong element of trust involved in customers handing over their details for a transaction. It’s a fact that small and medium sized enterprises are targeted more regularly by those with malicious intent, as they assume the security systems will either not be in place, or will be less sophisticated than those used by blue-chip corporations. Start by making sure that you have the latest anti-virus and malware software installed with regular security patches – Norton even make this type of software specifically for small businesses. Make sure that when you transfer data it’s sent securely via an encrypted data transfer service. Only collect the minimum of customer data that you need, be sure of what the purpose of any piece of information that you collect is and securely dispose of it as soon as it’s no longer needed. Simple steps like never leaving company devices unattended, requiring use of a secure password that is regularly updated and using automatic screen locking can also help.

Dealing With Natural Disaster

It’s not something that anyone likes to think about, but events in the natural world can sometimes overtake us. The recent forest fires, or things like hurricanes show that extreme conditions can and do occur and seem to be getting more frequent. The Small Business Disaster Survey found that 74 per cent of small businesses in the US don’t have a proper disaster recovery plan in place – meaning that if a worst-case scenario did occur, it would effectively spell the end of their company. Getting the right insurances for your business should never be an area where you cut corners. Find an insurance broker that you can speak to about your needs who will be able to find the cover that fits your business best – it can be very specific to what you do. You may find the requirements of restaurant insurance are quite different from those of an office based or a manufacturing business.

Creating A Communications Plan

Whether the situation is a natural disaster, a man-made one, or something completely unforeseen like Coronavirus, having a crisis communications plan in the event of things not being ‘business as usual’ is essential. You need to be able to send the right messages to employees and to customers when life throws a curveball. Your employee plan should include making sure that staff are safe, and determine if there are any alternative working arrangements that can be offered on a temporary basis. Remember that people are your most valuable resource, so be sensitive in your approach – if your staff have been through a crisis they may well need time to deal with their own lives and family issues as well. You should also consider what you might need to tell your customers. In some situations, you won’t be exactly sure what is happening and when business will be back to normal, and it’s okay to admit this. Just be clear that you are doing your utmost to get things back on track, keep communicating as the situation develops and be clear about channels customers can use to contact you.

Identifying Business Critical Activities

Not many small businesses can afford to shut down indefinitely if a crisis occurs. You’ll want to do what you can to get up and running again in some way, even if it’s not full service. So it’s a good idea to create a plan of which activities are business critical to your operations, and which ones could be temporarily shelved if need be. This allows you to plan resources better, and potentially redirect employees onto more urgently needed tasks. Work out of there are parts of it that can be done from an alternative location if your premises are affected. It’s always a good idea to have a back-up plan for a range of scenarios in place.

Keep In Contact With The Small Business Administration

There is some federal support available if disaster bites. The Small Business Administration (SBA) will provide disaster relief loans of up to $2 million on favourable terms, so if it’s a case of severe cash flow issues, look into those circumstances before turning to other sources of funding. You should be able to use social media to contact them if other lines of communication aren’t accessible. Equally, there can be some mileage in crowdfunding if you do it correctly. People are generally very willing to help out small businesses with a clear mission statement, so it can be worth stating your case.

Make Time To Look After Yourself

Small business owners are used to operating under a lot of pressure, and of course in times of hardship, this can go through the roof. It may seem like you’re getting pulled in every direction, but it’s important to remember that you need to treat yourself like any other resource and safeguard your own wellbeing. This means taking steps like ensuring you are getting adequate nutrition and a good night’s sleep where possible, taking some daily exercise and doing things to ease the anxiety you’re likely to be experiencing, such as using a mindfulness app or accessing a counselling service if necessary.

Securing Your Premises

Ensuring the physical security of your premises is also important. Any crime against your property is potentially a disaster that can raise the cost of doing business. Theft of business property is sadly a serious issue that does go on in companies of all sizes. Discovering one of these crimes on your own doorstep can be deeply upsetting, and take a long while to recover from. Deciding on a secure location for your premises and investing in things like a cctv network can all help to lessen the risks you face. A buildings security expert can help you to make an assessment of your premises and advise on what could be improved. Things such as steel security doors or shutters to prevent unauthorized entry, a secure alarm system throughout the building with motion sensors and automatic police notification may be worth it depending on what you do and store in your location and where it is. Adding lighting in darker areas and key entry points as well as cameras that can alert directly to your mobile phone are also steps you can take to make your physical business location a bit safer. Some businesses also decide they want to take the step of employing security guards or dogs to patrol at night – understanding how high risk your business is for an attack will help with this. Doing a comprehensive risk assessment for your premises is a good way to look at the situation dispassionately and identify any areas you could work on to make it easier to secure.

With all the many risks that going into business entails, it can be very hard to know where to concentrate efforts and resources. But it’s clear that failing to take any action at all could stand a real chance of jeopardizing everything you have worked so hard to build up. Taking small steps and pulling together a practical plan of action doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right preparation, you get the peace of mind of knowing that when everything goes a little crazy, you have the planning in place to help you get through the situation and survive to trade another day.

Protecting Your Business From The Threat Of Cybercrime

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StrategyDriven Risk Management and Managing Your Business Article |Cybercrime|Protecting Your Business From The Threat Of CybercrimeThere are many threats to each and every business the whole world over. You might look at your company and think that just because you are only a small operation, then you won’t be at risk. But there is one thing that is a fact, cybercriminals do not discriminate.

Whether your business is worth billions, or you are a sole-trader, you are likely to come under attack. You might currently be facing several attempts each day. Although, depending on the type of business that you operate, this could be considerably more.

What Effects Will A Cyber Attack Have On Your Business?

In the event of an attack, and the very least, cybercrime will cause your websites and services to suffer from downtime which will have a financial knock-on. The outcome will generally be much worse.

You might end up losing customer data, which will result in mass-identity theft. You may face fines from the government if the breach could have been prevented, and you might face legal proceedings from affected customers.

All in all, you are likely to lose a lot of money and face severe damage to your reputation. It might all result in you going out of business completely.

How Can You Protect Your Business?

There are many ways that you can protect yourself. Firstly, you should make sure that you are following the best practice guides for data protection in your specific industry. If you are handling customer or client information, you have a duty to ensure stringent measures are in place to protect the data. Where you are working with data that is particularly sensitive, for example, financial information or even medical records, you may have additional regulations to adhere to because of the increased risk that you face.

One of the best ways that you can ensure that you are fully protected is to use the services of an IT specialist or a Managed Service Provider. You can learn more about the various services that an IT support team will be able to provide in order to help your business to protect itself.

What Measures Can You Take In House?

Keeping your business safe from cyberattacks is something that everyone in your business should be doing. It is so important that you should create policies and procedures around the threat, and implement a whole raft of training measures to ensure your team understand the risks and know how to take measures to keep your business safe.

Change passwords often. If your team are all changing their password every month to something that is new and unique, you will be able to minimize the risk of front-door access to your systems via stolen passwords.

Train your staff on phishing emails. Your team need to know not to click on links in emails, even if they look legitimate.

Use multifactor logins. By including a biometric element or a personal question as a secondary stage of any login, you can minimize the risk of anyone but the correct user logging in.

Never share passwords. Every employee needs their own unique login. If people share logins, it increases the risk dramatically.

Protecting Your Company from Cyber Attacks

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Risk Management Article |Cyber Attacks|Protecting Your Company from Cyber AttacksHow well are you protecting your company, client and staff data? Holding any kind of data will mean you need to be employing security measures to make sure all information you collate for whatever reason is secure.

Protecting your company from serious cyber threats is something you should be taking seriously within your business. How secure you need to be depends on the type of company you are running. Different sectors need different types of security measures to protect the company and also staff and customers details including personal information and banking details along with credit card numbers.

Use a Firewall

This should be something you use as standard. A firewall is your first one of defence against a security attack. And unfortunately, small businesses tend to be targeted more often than larger companies due to the level of security that is employed.

Consider an internal firewall along with an external one too for added protection against threats and potential hacks.

Educate Employees

Again, this is something most people are aware of. However, staff training on the use of technology and online habits and practises is never a waste of time. Especially as online security threats are changing and evolving all the time.

Draw up company guidelines for personal and work use and educate them on the many ways they could cause a breach in security unintentionally – such as opening links in unfamiliar emails. Make sure everyone understands and signs a document to agree to the security measures they have been trained on.

Limit Sensitive Information

Allowing certain employees access to sensitive information is another way you can reduce the risk of your staff creating a security breach. By giving different staff members limited access, the less the chance of that information getting into the wrong hands. And if it does, then you will know exactly who caused the breach and deal with it swiftly.

Regularly Back-Up Data

Making sure you have backups will help you get up and running again in the event of a security breach. Prevention is always the best option but you want to make sure that should the worst happen, you can still access everything you need to.

It is recommended that you back up to a cloud. The GCC High Cloud is now available for more companies to offer you another level of security.

Have your backups processed on a regular basis to ensure minimum disruption in the event of a security breach.

Install Anti Malware

A 2016 data breach investigation identified that 30% of employees opened phishing emails. You may presume that all employees know not to open phishing emails, some will still open them.

Phishing scams involve malware being placed on a computer when a link is clicked. installing anti-malware can help remove and/or block this before it gets any information or causes any damage. Include this as part of your training and make sure your anti-malware is running on all devices and internal and external networks.

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.

Five reasons you need IT support for your business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |IT Support|Five reasons you need IT support for your businessNo matter the size of your business, you should consider having some form of IT support for your brand. Why is that, though? If it’s just you or you have only a small team, you might be thinking there are very few benefits for this – you could think you can do this yourself.

However, you should not underestimate the advantages of having an expert in this area on hand to help you with any problems. Whether your problems are show-stopping issues or minor hassles, having someone who can resolve them quickly, efficiently and in the best way possible can be a great asset. Here are some reasons why you should have IT support.

Information management

Having proper management of all your digital information is vital if your business is to succeed. You will need to have a proper IT support system to ensure that, if you want to log in or look at sales and orders, you should be able to do this with little fuss. You’ll want to avoid large issues like viruses that lose your files or infect your whole system.

Virus protection

The number of viruses and Trojans, as well as other damaging data, has grown in recent years. Every day, there are attempts by hackers trying to get access to an organization’s IT system to plant ransomware.

If these hackers are successful, then you will have to pay a large sum of money to retrieve your business records. By having the required antivirus programs installed to avoid these types of attacks, then you can ensure that your system won’t be affected.

Security

There will be many details you don’t want hackers to have access to, such as customer addresses, personal details, or even payment information. So, for your online business, these all need to be protected – and your IT support can be useful here.

Using the services of a proactive technical support team and using certified professionals means your IT infrastructure can be monitored around the clock. Issues can be dealt with before they become a problem, so you can eliminate complaints and increase productivity.

Maximize productivity

Small businesses depend on staff to be efficient, so downtime because of technical problems can cause significant productivity losses. Items such as computers, networks, smartphones and other technology will fail – and IT departments can perform these crucial tasks for maintenance and repair, so you can have your employees working again. Your staff will then have the support they need to perform as efficiently as possible.

Integration of technology and updates

New upgrades can be time-consuming and confusing – and IT professionals will help integrate those old and new systems. Without them, then your brand might end up being behind on adopting this new technology.

They will also help to troubleshoot the use of new systems and monitor them to ensure that they’re running well. You can also receive recommendations on what new services you could also use, based on your company’s specific needs.