While the media continuously captures security breaches, most people forget that regular attacks on businesses exist. Unfortunately, they are growing at quite a fast pace as hackers establish new methods of attacking.
However, online attacks aren’t the only thing that may threaten you. Sometimes it could even be physical if you work at an office!
So, what are the biggest threats to your business? Let’s find out in this article!
9 Tips you should follow to secure your business
1.Prioritize health
Health should be a top priority for all organizations worldwide. It may include making minor changes to your business structure to support employee needs and requirements and ensuring that they work in one of the safest ways possible without sacrificing their mental or physical well-being.
Additionally, if you risk your health, you are preparing to risk your future and your employees. Above all, it’s essential to reschedule and adjust your meetings, travel plans, and more to ensure they don’t directly threaten your health.
Your well-being and, more importantly, your employee’s well-being should be a priority for you in order to promote efficiency in running successful business operations. Investing in health insurance for your small business is another essential step in this direction. By providing health coverage, you support employees’ access to medical care, reduce their financial stress, and foster a culture of security and loyalty. This also contributes to a healthier, more focused, and productive team.
2.Fraud detection
Especially in the banking industry, fraud might be a common issue you are facing. Therefore, you need to have the right software to detect fraud in the banking industry. Moreover, some of the banks’ most common fraud challenges are customer onboarding, credit card fraud, account protection, and more.
While choosing the right anti-fraud software, here are a couple of ways you can prevent banking fraud:
- Keep an eye out for internal fraud
- Educate your customers
- Use real-time anti-fraud detection tools
- Monitor transactions
- Machine learning
There have been significant developments in anti-fraud detection. Still, as mentioned earlier, online attackers make continuous attacks. Let’s not forget that if we don’t stay updated with the latest fraud trends, we might fail to prevent it no matter which industry we participate in.
3.Auto-insurance
From a bunch of accidents to injuries, auto insurance might be one of the most important insurance you need to re-consider for your business. If you are a company with many company vehicles and require employees to drive around, you must have them covered. Being in a car puts people at risk, and you never know what may happen.
Auto insurance for business will protect you and your team from high vehicle repair costs, so the best thing you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride!
4.Educate your employees
If you want to be secure, your internal team needs to know a few things. First, if an external threat comes, your employees must somehow be able to prevent it. In fact, according to a study, more than 50% of online breaches happen because of employee negligence. Therefore, your employees must pay special attention and reduce online security risks.
In order to achieve this, you must document your security policies and provide the right amount of security training to your team. Security breaches will usually occur from phishing, and whenever you set up a clear policy, you might avoid it faster than you think.
5.Invest in adaptable technologies
What kind of role does technology play in our everyday lives? It’s the level of productivity it brings to our table and how much it has helped us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s face the truth; if we had to work from the office during a pandemic or close down completely, it would have damaged us health-wise and financially.
Technology has overcome this issue by allowing us to work remotely and keep operations running smoothly without risking our lives. Therefore, we must invest in technology as much as possible, such as remote tools for communicating with your team.
Above all, whenever you invest in technology, you can also stay updated with continuous changes that are made to the technological world. This way, you aren’t falling behind your competitors and keeping your business secure against external threats. We can work for so long but will get tired; technology won’t!
6.Use cyber security hardware and anti-virus software
A priority you should never leave aside is investing in cyber security and anti-virus software. These types of investments directly contribute to making your business more secure and let’s not forget that it is important to make your business faster and not dangerous.
Cyber security investments will not only pay off in the short term but in the long term as well. You don’t want to look like an easy target to your competitors because once they attack and are successful, they will most likely do it again!
Furthermore, we have anti-virus software and even Windows Firewall, which we can use to protect us against online attacks. However, choosing the proper hardware and software tools will help you with the following:
- Secures your network and business from any unauthorized access
- Sets up access controls that allow only authorized users to gain access
- Use encryption to secure your connection and internal data fully
- Implement software updates that continuously improve and monitor your online security
- Connects email servers and more
7.Limit data access
Alright, there’s something we need to clarify and one of the most important tips throughout this article. Data within a business is an important factor; without it, especially in the digital age, we can’t function. Therefore, we need to take extra care of it and protect it from falling into the wrong hands as much as possible. Why is limiting access so vital?
- Your internal team has access to a large amount of data, sensitive information, and customer data that need to be protected from the wrong hands, both internally and externally.
- According to last year’s report, the most common data breaches were from small and medium-sized companies involving actors from the internal team itself!
Now, a concerning threat is that you know your internal team has a considerable amount of access to the company’s data. But unfortunately, many of them aren’t responsible enough to protect it. Sometimes it can be intentional, but even many times, it may not be that way. Therefore, to ensure maximum security, assigning roles to each person within the team is best.
Not everyone within the team deserves access to data that doesn’t associate with them. Furthermore, avoid giving full access to newcomers; you can’t always trust them until they are part of your team.
8.Use multi-factor authentication
In other words, 2-factor authentications confirm log-ins of secure sites, such as whenever you get a code via email. The code can either be a text on your mobile phone or by email. This approach might be tiring at times, but it does ensure a high level of security and tries to avoid security breaches at a maximum level.
Furthermore, even if someone does manage to get your password, they won’t have the code to verify your log-in. Thus, they will need your phone number or email address to confirm it, which is nearly impossible for them to have.
9. Evaluate your finances
If you don’t feel organized regarding your business’s financial status, it’s time to solve this problem. Especially during a crisis, it may be difficult for you to determine what to do to succeed effectively. Financial procedures such as book-keeping, ROI, and expense management, will all add up over time.
Moreover, if you are someone that doesn’t feel like you are the one for this job, you can always hire someone else to do the work for you. Hiring a professional accountant is better than feeling bad about mismanagement issues.
Financial health should be a priority, but many people who don’t have an excellent financial background can struggle through this period. That’s why you need to take your finances seriously because it’ll affect the company’s overall reputation, portfolio, health, and everything else.
Wrapping everything up
Well, that’s all for this article. These are the nine most important tips you need to follow to ensure your business is secure. Of course, we can’t be entirely sure that there won’t ever be an online attack or that something will never go wrong, but the best thing to do is to be prepared for the worst.
When you expect something to happen and are prepared for it, it’s much better than being surprised by an attack. There are nine important steps you should carefully read through, so don’t rush through them. Take your time and put the work into making your business secure!
