Protecting the company you had worked tirelessly to develop is an important step, irrespective of if you are only starting or have been operating for quite some time.
Regrettably, many business owners overlook critical business protection measures in the haste of starting a firm or running day-to-day operations.
These seven actions can be taken right away to safeguard your business — which can be prone to disasters, data breaches, cyber-attacks, frauds, or theft.
7 Critical Measures to secure your business for consistent and accelerated growth
Every business wants to safeguard its enterprise from outside dangers.
Although that’s a reasonable wish, how can it realistically be accomplished?
Below are some necessary tips that you can implement to secure your business and ensure its success.
Spatially optimize your data as per location
Spatial data analysis helps to analyze enormous volumes of diverse data from numerous sources.
It particularly includes location-based statistics — giving you a comprehensive overview of problem areas. You can use the findings to develop reactive or proactive reaction strategies.
A few of its functions include disaster and crime detection techniques, intelligence gathering, information extraction, logistics management, and assessing problems in key infrastructure.
Therefore, spatial data analysis plays a significant role in merging and consolidating all business operations under one canopy with various data points – to construct an eco-system for crisis administration.
For instance, CPG data insights from spatially optimized data can prove beneficial when you are operating in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.
In the CPG sector, your business needs protection from several challenges faced by field sales — such as remote locations, disrupted client connections, heavy traffic, and bad weather.
When you collect and use data for optimization, you can boost your field sales effectiveness by designing and balancing territories more skillfully. This leads to bigger and better deals by increasing sales rep productivity and cutting costs.
Prevent fraudulent chargebacks
When a client demands an illegitimate refund outright or utilizes a stolen card, which is credited back to the rightful cardholder, it is termed chargeback fraud. You need to protect your business from such frauds by not accepting payments from stolen credit cards — acquired via theft, phishing methods, or the dark web.
Before the rightful cardholder initiates a chargeback complaint, your company has already sent the products and is now responsible for paying the charges, so there are different ways to prevent fraudulent chargebacks, for example having a strong alert system for fraudulent transactions.
- Device fingerprinting: It creates device and browser fingerprint IDs (Identity Documents) that allow customers to be followed across emulators, VPNs (Virtual Private Networks), and incognito surfing.
- Email profiling: With data augmentation, email addresses might provide important information. By considering the age and type of domain, string analysis, and other factors, you can determine how unsafe an account is.
- Machine Learning (ML): You can also use machine learning and human judgment to create risk scores for predictive scoring. The criteria can be modified, and they get better with time.
Arm your business with all the information you require so that you can identify risky website visitors and instantly block blatant fraudsters.
Install and update data protection software
Install a data security program. A firewall is a form of data security tool that protects your computers by keeping hackers out. It works by recognizing the connections you form, allowing those to pass, and identifying unauthorized intrusions from outside, preventing them from making an entry.
There are hardware and software firewalls for sale. A router is a piece of hardware that lies between your computers and the Internet. Your computer runs background software programs and firewall software is pre-installed on Windows PCs (Personal Computers).
Using anti-malware products is another measure you can take to protect your business by combating data breaches. You must make sure that your software applications are upgraded. Establish a rule requiring your personnel to verify their company-issued laptops for system and software upgrades. That’s how the operating system on your computer resolves issues and enhances functionality.
Your IT (Information Technology) division should plan routine maintenance and look for software upgrades. If they want to install new software on the computers used by your business, they’ll probably use an admin password.
Whenever updating is required, the majority of applications and systems notify users via push notifications. Also, maintain a data backup. Although taking this precaution won’t neutralize the threat, it’s essential to routinely store your data in the event a breach does happen.
Your system should be configured to create automated data backups once a week. The backups should be kept in a safe place, either offline or in the cloud.
Protect your passwords
Password leaks today are mostly caused by phishing and the compromise of credential databases.
Phishing is when criminals send communications to deceive victims into divulging passwords for their emails, and eCommerce, private, or financial accounts.
Due to the communications’ excellent writing and recognizability (often with a corporate logo and trademark), victims may unintentionally divulge their usernames and passwords to scammers.
Hacking into servers where passwords are stored in another way hackers steal credentials. It doesn’t matter whether your password is basic or complex when your database has been breached and the hacker has your details.
To secure your business, speak to your web hosting company regarding corporate security for your records and two-factor verification.
The latter necessitates another authentication level whenever someone signs in from an unrecognized IP (Internet Protocol) address. However, always use complex passwords since they will shield you against hackers that target your company and attempt to figure out your passwords to unlock your private information.
Protect Your Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity)
You should make sure that your company’s server is shielded against unauthorized traffic.
There are various methods via which you can accomplish this; your company’s webmaster can advise you on which is most effective.
Below are two of our suggestions:
- Keep the wifi network private. If you do not want the wifi to appear on consumers’ smartphones when they search for surrounding hot spots, you may conceal it.
Warning: It won’t be concealed from all gadgets and can become a hassle if you have guests trying to connect to your internet.
- Use business WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access II) encryption. For organizations, this is advised since it offers higher degrees of protection. WPA2-enterprise employs a RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-in User Service) authentication server — that uses one password.
Employees can connect and view data saved on a remote server if your company’s server is located remotely.
Make your emails secure.
When email messages leave your gadget, the content is converted to an unreadable code that cannot be read until it reaches the designated receiver.
Your email messages and communications can be encrypted on many systems. If your platform cannot, encryption software is an accessible and affordable option.
All of your emails should be subjected to authentication, which is a good idea for incoming and outgoing communication. This will assist in identifying misleading emails that might be malicious.
The methods used by each email service to enable encryption and authentication are different.
We will describe what to search for in your provider’s settings rather than instructing you on how to accomplish it on each of the different platforms:
If you submit any details online, for example, when making purchases, signing up for newsletters, accessing members-only locations, or completing request forms — enable SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) encryption.
Programs for email verification are integrated into email providers and are designed to check the origins of incoming communications. They can identify spam emails and phishing materials and treat them according to your policies.
Shred personal data
In this electronic era, we often overlook straightforward duties like deleting documents that hold critical information. Find a provider that performs shredding if your team lacks a shredder.
Here is a list of typical business-related papers and the frequency at which you ought to shred them.
- Credit and bank statements
Keep your credit card and bank records for a year. Your information will be online at several banking institutions. Be free to destroy those statements much sooner if it applies to your company. You must only keep these records for a while longer if you require them to verify your tax filings.
- Tax records
Keeping these for seven years is the generally accepted retention period for tax records. Both your real tax returns and any supporting records from a tax year are included in this.
- Human Resources (HR) documentation
If your company has over 15 workers, you are required by law to maintain all staff data for at least one year, as per the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
All application forms, promotions, employee evaluations, layoffs, and even the documents for candidates you don’t recruit are included in this. Check with your HR professional for further information on the retention requirements for specific employee medical files.
- Records of employment taxes
All staffer tax records should be kept for a minimum of four years, according to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). These records include Social Security Numbers (SSNs), personal details, income and compensation data, tax returns, and benefits data.
- Real estate purchase agreements
Once you leave the ownership of your business property, you need to save any related documentation for seven years. This comprises invoices for the purchase and maintenance of assets such as buildings, cars, and business equipment.
- Customer records
You should presumably also shred any documents you possess that include consumer information. Personal information about your customers is the first element to take into account.
Next, consider how long you should keep that documentation on hand in case you need it for reimbursement or claim later. You must always store confidential customer documents in a secure area, irrespective of the data. If the data is leaked, it might not be good for your business or your client.
Conclusion
Test and improve your business protection plan frequently in case your company is compromised due to data security flaws.
Review your data security policies frequently to determine whether they can be made better.
If you ever experience a data breach problem, use the lessons you learned from it and modify your plan to stop it from happening again.
