If you’re the owner of the kind of small business that you run from out of your spare room, it can often feel as though you’re only skirting the edges of business legitimacy. However, the truth is that no matter what size your business is if you’re trying to build a career from it, it’s a real business. However, many small business owners end up leaning into this kind of uncertainty to avoid dealing with certain areas of their business. After all, if you can tell yourself that your business is “too small” to worry about certain things, then there’s no real limit to the things you can avoid dealing with.
One of the most common things smaller businesses try to ignore is security. It’s strangely common for people to assume that their business is somehow too small to be worth protecting. This could be because they don’t consider it to be that valuable or simply because they see themselves as being too small for criminals to be worth considering. Both are categorically false, and thinking this way will put your business in danger.
No matter the size of your business, you must have an effective DNS filtering system to block malicious sites and prevent cyberattacks. Here are a few ways that you can make sure that security is an important part of your business.
Secure the premises
This is especially important for those who work from home. Far too often, people assume that they don’t need to increase their levels of security when they start using their homes as the premises for their business. However, it’s imperative that, as soon as your business starts earning money, you put effort into securing the premises as much as possible. At the very least, you should have an alarm system installed, keep the entire place carefully locked, and hire security personnel.
You should also look into installing a security camera. It might also be a good idea to lock whichever room you use for your business if you work from home. That way, there’s an extra layer of security between an intruder and the part of your business they want.
Password protect everything
Of course, it’s not just your physical security that you need to worry about. You should also take a lot of care when it comes to your digital security as well. After all, most modern businesses do so much of their work online that leaving things without effective password protection puts you in an incredibly vulnerable position. Again, you might think that, if your business is particularly small, no one is going to care about trying to break into it, but you’d be wrong.
Small businesses are just as often the victims of cybercrime as larger ones. Sure, it’s an extra layer of inconvenience for you, but it’s an incredibly small price to pay for your business’s overall security and well-being. This should not only mean securing your computer(s), but making sure you have secure mobile devices as well, especially in this era where many people do a lot of their online activities through a phone or tablet computer.
If you are a healthcare business, for instance, then security is something highly essential, plus you have to make sure that it is HIPAA compliant as well to meet current standards. This means doubling up on security online, especially inside the hospital, as well as integrating secure messaging for healthcare, so that communications are safe from prying eyes.
Store your data safely
Now that we are living in a heavily digital age, the concept of storing data has radically changed. Now, instead of storing files in large cabinets on site, most businesses store their data digitally, either in dedicated servers or using the cloud. Both of these options have their benefits and drawbacks that you should keep in mind, but it’s important to think about how to keep them secure. Again, making everything password-protected can make a huge difference, but you should also consider who you’re leaving your data with. You may want to outsource a managed IT service for your business to ensure that robust backup and recovery is implemented so that your data is stored with optimal safety. This can be a great cost-effective solution, and along with advanced technical support and experience, your business will benefit from this, and you will be able to focus on other elements within the business, knowing the important data is secure.
There are plenty of cloud computing companies that will be able to securely store your data effectively without you having to do anything about it. That way, not only will it be incredibly easy to access your data, but you will be able to rest easy knowing that it will be impossible for anyone who doesn’t have the authority to do so.
Keep your software up to date
Cybercriminals are often working tirelessly to try and get past online security methods. Things like firewalls and anti-malware software are designed to keep intruders out, but cybercriminals put in a great deal of effort to break through these kinds of things. The very best way to make sure that they can’t get through is to keep your security software as up-to-date as possible. That way, there will be just that little but incredibly important extra barrier between you and people who want to sabotage your business.
Sure, it might seem as though this is a lot of effort to go for something that you might never need to worry about, but the truth is those small businesses can be incredibly vulnerable, and it’s always better to have these kinds of precautions in place and not need them than for something to happen and to wish that you did have them.
