With major businesses falling to the attacks of cyber hackers and viruses it’s essential that those who are just getting started in any kind of business are fully prepared. These are large companies that have high tech security
systems, hundreds of technicians and IT support personnel on the payroll and an extensive system of protection on all of their customer and business information and yet, they are easily being picked apart by hackers. So how do you, as a new company, make sure that your information (and your customer’s information) is protected? You start out with the very best.

Don’t Let One Day Go By Without Protection

You might think that you can just let things go for that first day or two without having to worry about security. No one knows who you are yet, right? So it’s okay that you don’t really have virus protection on all the computers and that you still have to get some work done, right? Absolutely not. You want to make sure that you have virus protection on your computers as soon as you turn them on. It should be the very first thing that you do. Just because no one knows who you are doesn’t mean that you can’t get hit with a virus even totally by accident.

Be Fully Secure

Your business is going to have some type of physical location, or several physical locations. You want to make sure that your people know what they should be doing when it comes to security. Make sure that they understand security is a paramount concern and that they should always report something they might think is suspicious. Even if they think it’s something simple or it’s not a big deal, anything that seems strange, whether it be a phone call, an email or someone asking a lot of questions, report it and be safe.

Use Several Security Protocols

You probably already thought about having a password to get into more secure information on your systems, but having more than one system of security is going to be much better for you and your company. You may want multiple passwords or something even more secure, like a password and a code that is sent individually each time you need to log in. These things will make sure that it’s much harder for someone without authorization to actually get in to the information.

Use Encryption Always

You’re going to want to make sure you have good encryption software on your system as well. Just leaving all of that information available, even with high tech security protocol, virus scanners and extensive log in processes makes it entirely too easy for someone to get into. Encrypting it means that you and anyone with authorization can easily get in, but anyone else is going to have a hard time because they’re going to have to unencrypt the information. It’s going to be no good to them (and unreadable) until they do.

Hire a Professional

Finally, make sure that you have a professional to help you with the process. Keeping all of your security in house may seem like a good idea, and it might be for a short time, but as your business starts to grow and expand the security process takes on a life of its own. It will very quickly become too much for you and your company to deal with on their own. Having another company that can take over that security is going to be essential, but hiring them only after you start making it big can be problematic.

When you wait to hire a security team it means that you’re creating something yourself to start out. When you then transfer all of your security to another company they have to either figure out how to understand your process or they have to change everything to an entirely new process (which is the more common option). That means your employees have to learn something entirely new to get into information that they’ve been using in a completely different way. It makes the process a whole lot more difficult for them and for you this way.

Your best option is to start out with a high quality security team that will be able to secure everything right from the start. This makes it easier on your employees who don’t need to relearn systems they already knew, and it also makes everything far more secure for your customers, who know that you are putting their security first. This can actually be a differentiating factor in those customers choosing to work with you instead of another company as well. That means you’re going to have better security that you don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort on and you’re going to get more customers as a result. It’s a win-win.

What Hacking Does to You

If you aren’t careful about protecting your company it becomes only too easy for you to get hacked. Sometimes you’re lucky and the hacker is just a teenager who wants to see if they can do it. They may come in, play around with something and then get out. These are things you can easily recover from. But if you’re not lucky … well you could end up with a lot of damage to your website, your company and the sense of security that you give to your customers. That’s a lot harder to recover from.

By securing your company from the inside out you’re going to help protect your own good name. You want to keep your business up and running. Well, cyber hacks have ruined far larger companies than what you’re starting out with. You definitely don’t want to take that risk and wind up with your company failing before it’s really even taken off. Don’t let the name ‘startup’ convince you that your company doesn’t need the absolute best that there is out there. You want the name that you create to be synonymous with the best.