Whether you work from home, use a coworking space, or rent a small office, protecting your small business from cyber attacks, theft, and more is essential. Yet, many small businesses ignore the need for protection, and this can lead to significant damage if they are not careful. Protecting your business comes with costs that you may not think you can justify, though, so here are a few reasons why you must protect your company.
No One Is Too Small to Get Hacked
Statistics show that 43% of attacks are focused on small businesses, yet less than 15% of these businesses are equipped to deal with cyberattacks.
It’s understandable why SMEs might not think they are even a blip on the radar of hackers, but it is because they don’t have the robust protection of large corporations that they are such an attractive prospect. If you fail to protect your business or at least put up a strong firewall at the front to deter hackers, you run the risk of losing information and seeing all of your hard work go to waste overnight.
If you’re thinking it is expensive to invest in protection, you should reconsider. Setting up cybersecurity protocols and looking at the security operations centre best practices will help you avoid issues, whether you’re working alone or have a small burn dedicated team at your disposal.
Protecting Your Business Will Help Maintain Your Reputation
One thing that small businesses cannot afford to lose is customer trust. Without a solid, dependable customer base, your business will find it impossible to stay afloat.
This trust is difficult to build but exceptionally easy to break. Therefore, you must maintain customer trust and show them you care about protecting their information. There are numerous ways to achieve this, whether it’s using agreed data protection systems or showing that it is safe to pay via your store’s online portal.
The more comfortable your customers feel using your service, the happier they will be to return and recommend it to others, which will help improve your reputation.
You Cannot Afford the Downtime
In business, every sale matters, and for a small company, this is even more true. You need a regular financial flow to keep your business operating, and any hackers or security issues can lead to downtime you just cannot afford.
It’s not just the risk of losing customers, but also their business. Some hacks or security breaches can take hours to fix in the best scenario. For more severe issues, there’s a chance your system or store could be out of commission for weeks.
This should convince any business owner that protecting their company is the only way to avoid severe issues. As hackers are becoming more sophisticated, you should stay on top of it, also.
Protection
Even if you don’t think your small business is under threat, you never want to find out that this is not the case. By investing in robust security, both onsite and online, you can avoid many of the pitfalls that strike small businesses that have been too naïve to think about the bigger picture.