Protect Your Assets: Keeping Your Business Safe and Secure

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As an entrepreneur, you’ve put blood, sweat and tears into making your business a success. The last thing you want is for criminals to come along and steal your hard work or jeopardize what you’ve achieved, so keeping yourself secure is crucial. These days you need to consider how to stay safe both online as well as in the real world, here’s how you can go about it. 

 

In the workplace

As a business, your premises will be home to lots of expensive equipment, stock, sometimes even cash that criminals would love to get their hands on. Burglars target businesses because they know the rewards are great, in the case of lots of shops and offices no one is around after closing time allowing them to get in and out unnoticed. CCTV and a burglar alarm act as a deterrent as well as making it easier for them to get caught if they do still enter. A secure safe that’s hidden away and bolted down should house any valuables and cash. Be sure to have cash collected regularly, the more that you have sitting around the more you stand to lose if you are targeted. While methods to keep criminals out are essential, you still need to play it safe. Metal, lockable shutters that pull down over doors and windows are another effective way to keep criminals out. While these methods might not be a hundred percent guaranteed, because most burglars are opportunistic, making their lives harder can often be all it takes to avoid being targeted. 

 

Online

Managing your cybersecurity can feel daunting as a small business owner, as these days, it’s not just your physical premises you need to protect. With more and more business being conducted online, the more opportunity there is for security breaches. These aren’t just a problem for bigger business, many criminals actually prefer smaller companies as they know that in most cases their security will be easier to get past. Using cloud based solutions is an effective way to keep your information safe. Cloud systems are encrypted for safety and means that instead of being stored on a hard drive that you own your information is stored online. This is helpful as if your physical computers are stolen, there’s no sensitive information stored on them. Often criminals gain access to businesses due to simple passwords being used. Update them and be careful who knows them. Trusted, senior staff members should be the only ones with this kind of access. We tend to use specific words and combinations that cybercriminals will know to try, have a look at the most common passwords and see if yours is one of them. Changing usernames and passwords every few months can also be a proactive way to prevent crime. Do your research and get clued up on online security, resources like Office Security: 10 Guidelines to Protect Your Commercial Property can be a good place to start. The more you know, the better prepared you’ll be.