Ask a small business owner what some of their greatest fears are in running their companies and they could probably fire-off a litany of items in just a few minutes.
When it comes to running a small company, there are tasks such as making the right hires, keeping the budget in order, making sure your customers get top-notch service, and growing at a pace where you don’t grow too fast or too slow.
With that in mind, how concerned should you as a small business owner be about identity theft?
Cyber-criminals Can Strike in Short Amount of Time
While you have hopefully avoided becoming an identity theft victim, your small business can always be looking to do more to prevent such crimes, along with reacting quickly and effectively if they do happen.
Among the tricks to deploy:
- Hiring the right talent – Keeping identity theft at bay starts with hiring the right talent, especially when running a smaller company. Keep in mind that many smaller companies have employees handling multiple tasks. As a result, your workers could have their hands in a number of areas, leaving them with more work to do online. The more time workers are online, the more opportunities there are for identity theft thieves to strike. That online time also likely includes surfing social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others. With that in mind, make sure your employees are not divulging personal company or customer information during their social visits. Something as innocent as “we leave the back office door unlocked during the daytime” to “many of our clients gross more than $200,ooo a year” put out in a tweet, share etc. can be picked up by people who have bad intentions and are monitoring social sites. It is also important that you hire employees who come with clean records, meaning no brushes with the law and those not trashing former employers in person or on social networks. While not set in stone, individuals who come to you with checkered pasts can prove to be a higher risk if you take them in as an employee. Lastly, it never hurts to have more than one employee overseeing important areas like billing, handling client accounts etc. That way, you lower the risk of one of your workers taking pertinent company information (for themselves or spreading it on social sites) and using it for financial gain;
- Securing usernames and passwords – It sounds like a simple thing to do, but just how safe are your company-issued passwords and usernames? To lessen the prospects of your Internet security being violated, it is vital that you safeguard such sensitive information just as you would do with home computers. Never allow employees to share such information, especially with those outside the company. You may also be working with independent contractors who have administrative access to your website. As a result, they might be able to access client or company data, client or company email addresses and more. When this occurs, make sure you are dealing with trusted workers and trusted techniques to protect usernames and passwords from identity theft criminals;
- Responding decisively – In the event your small business does fall victim to cyber-crimes, don’t panic. In order to effectively respond to the needs of your business and your customers, deal with the problem/s in a cool and collective manner. Your clients will want to see action that demonstrates solving the problem and not leaving them hanging. With all the identity theft stories in the media in recent years, the companies typically who come out of the incidents the best are those who rectify the matter as soon as possible, along with keeping customers updated about how to fix matters and better protect against such cyber-attacks in the future. Using social media to soon announce that the problem has been rectified (without going into specific measures taken and/or security protocols) will go a long way in calming the fears of your customers;
- Review security procedures – Even if your small business does not fall victim to identity theft, you should always be reviewing the security procedures you do (and do not) have in place to see where improvements can be made. Take note that cyber-criminals are always looking to stay one step ahead of both the business owner and law enforcement, so it is up to you (and your web hosting provider) to keep such thieves at bay. Along with reviewing your security procedures, have occasional staff meetings and get input from your employees on how to better avoid cyber-attacks. Since your employees are essentially your frontline against such attacks, their feedback can prove invaluable. Finally, never look at money spent on cyber security as a waste of valuable financial resources. You have to remember that just one successful cyber-attack (on your website or through social media errors on the part of one or more of your employees) against your small business can lead to sizable financial losses, the divulging of proprietary information, and bad PR. Yes, you may think you’re spending too much right now in identity theft prevention measures, but do you really want to find out the true cost of just one successful attack against your brand?
While having a website and a presence on social media is all but a must for many small businesses these days, do it in an educated and secure way to make sure you’re not the next identity theft victim.
Photo credit: BigStockPhoto.com
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1TmZOHh via transformational marketing
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