How to Protect Your Small Business

marketing planFrom liability to data and cybersecurity breaches – here are some ways to protect your small business from common threats to your business

Creating a small business is often a labor of love, and after you put your heart and soul into creating your small business, you want to protect it. Between cybersecurity breaches, theft, and accidents, there are many small blindspots that could turn into a costly error if you aren’t prepared.

Below are some of the common ways that your small business could be threatened and how to protect your business against these threats.

Back-Up Everything

The data that you have is important to ensure that your small business continues to function as optimally as possible. However, sometimes mistakes happen. If your data is wiped from a server, a key file is deleted, or your technology is destroyed in a fire or flood, you could lose months or even years worth of data. That’s why you should make sure that you back up all of your business’ technology on a cloud server. By storing your files in a cloud, you can just restore a backup of your information should something bad happen.

If you’re using an IT service, make sure it offers disaster recovery services in case something happens. In 2018, only 72% of providers offered disaster recovery services, which means you are likely to find a recovery service provider with relative ease.

Get Insurance

Accidents happen every day. In fact, every year, there are almost three million workplace injuries and illnesses that don’t result in a fatality. this means that you need to protect your business against becoming liable for these accidents by getting liability insurance. If you end up sued after someone is injured at your business, you could end up losing a lot of money. However, with liability insurance, you will get help to not be financially ruined because of a workplace accident.

Take Cybersecurity Measures

The internet can be a great place when it comes to getting online orders or having new customers for your service come across your business. However, it’s also an avenue for crimes to occur. Internet crimes happen when someone uses the internet to represent themselves in a way that is false or fraudulent. When someone commits an internet crime, they could be interested in getting more information about your business, trying to con you out of money, or it’s possible that they could be planning to hack your company.

It’s important to protect yourself against any form of internet crime before it happens. Make sure that all of your passwords are strong across all of your accounts, whether they’re for your company’s site, social media, or email. If you’re worried about hackers getting in through your wifi, you can get a VPN which will help protect you from those type of breaches. In addition, make sure that all of your employees know how to protect themselves and their information from hackers to avoid having an easy access point to get onto your servers or accounts.

You also need to make sure your company isn’t committing an internet crime. Is everything on your website true? Are you providing the service or product you’re advertising? Even if you’re unintentionally lying on your site, you could be committing an internet crime without fully realizing it. If you’re unsure about anything you post, ask an attorney about it.

Use an Accountant

Although you may be an expert when it comes to your small business’s specialty, the odds are that you’re not an expert on taxes. You can do your taxes incorrectly and somehow end up committing tax fraud or evasion. That’s why it’s so important to use an accountant to take care of any and all tax-related measures for your business. An accountant can also help you get the most out of your taxes, meaning that you can end up saving money in the long run.

Get an Attorney

While you’re in the process of getting an accountant, you should also look into hiring an attorney. Although you may not need one right away, having an attorney that you can contact whenever you have issues is key to not wasting time if there are any problems that arise in the future. If you have any questions about what you’re posting online, contracts with vendors or customers, or any other legal-related query, you know exactly who to call. In addition, if you do end up having any sort of legal issue down the road, you will have someone that you can immediately call about it.

Be Smart About Customers and Vendors

Depending on the kind of business that you’re running, it’s possible that you could encounter fraudulent customers or vendors.

If you’re a B2B business, you should make sure that you’ve done a check on all of your customers before you begin selling to them. Check their credit scores as well as any references from other companies that they’ve worked with. If they are fraudulent or have a tendency to scam people, you’ll be able to find out.

If you’re a direct to consumer business, you should check out the vendors that you work with as well. Read their reviews and speak to other companies that they sell to. In addition, make sure that you order samples of any products that they’re supplying to you to ensure that the quality and characteristics are in line with what you want for a product. If you buy a large amount of product that you deem unusable, it may lead to a huge loss for your business that could have been avoided.

No matter what kind of business you’re running, there are going to be issues that arise and can possibly have a negative impact on your business. These are some examples of common issues that can impact a business of any size, but you should also think about any risk factors that are specific to the field that your business is in.

How do you protect your business? Have you ever had problems with any of these issues? Let us know in the comments below.

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Valerie M.

Contributor at Small Business Marketing Tools
Valerie M. is a writer from Upstate New York. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from The State University of New York at Fredonia in 2016 and is currently working at a digital marketing agency where she writes blog posts for a variety of small businesses all over the country. Valerie enjoys writing about music, animals, nature, and traveling.