The last few years have seen the number of online businesses grow to an all-time high. In this digital generation, all you need is a solid business idea and a well-crafted strategy to reach millions of people from all over the world. However, the growth of your online business comes with different challenges. Your business is exposed to various cybersecurity threats.
More than half of the small businesses in existence have experienced a cyber-attack of some kind. However, most companies that have fallen victim to the attacks have had no idea how to protect themselves from the various security risks such as phishing, ransomware, zero-day, and malware attacks.
Knowing some of the best ways to protect your online business is an excellent way to protect your data, finances, and reputation.
The good news is businesses can explore many different ways to protect their online businesses. In this article, we look at some of the methods you should keep in mind if you want to improve your online business’s safety.
1. Choose a Safe Hosting Service
You cannot run a successful online business without a website. However, having a well-designed and powerful website will not help your business if you work with the wrong web hosting service. You should prioritize finding a reliable web hosting company that is entirely PCI compliant. This way, you can have guarantees about the safety of your business website’s checkout and payment services.
While free hosting services can help you cut costs and save money, you should never give it much thought if you want to run a successful online business. In addition to low speeds and shared server space, free hosting also comes with poor security features. Free hosting will never work for you if you want to protect sensitive business information, customer data, or credit card accounts.
Ideally, you should work with a hosting service that offers an SSL certificate which marks your website with HTTPS meaning HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. It means that every bit of communication between your site and the customer’s browser is secure.
2. Work With an Experienced and Qualified Support Team
The online landscape keeps changing, and you may have a hard time staying up to date with all the changes that may affect your business. Naturally, your responsibility is growing the business and taking it to the next level. You can hardly manage this if you take on every single task on your own. For the best results, have an in-house team of support staff or outsource some responsibilities. You can work with eCommerce lawyers who help with everything ranging from IP problems to internal governance. They can also offer other services such as contract drafting, selling a business, and dealing with infringers.
3. Focus on Email Security
Businesses send millions of emails each day. However, not all emails share legitimate content. It means that most of the emails sent to your company and employees are spam emails which could present a security threat. Emails can infect your business computer systems with ransomware. In this case, cybercriminals attach malicious content to the emails they send. If you open an infected email, you allow the ransomware to access your system. This puts your business at risk for further attacks.
To prevent this:
- Educate your employees to avoid using the business email address to subscribe to insecure mailing lists.
- Ensure that everyone in the company understands the importance of taking precautions with links sent through emails, unreliable websites, and social media channels.
- Unless you expect to receive a specific link, make sure you scan it before opening.
Frequently cleaning up your email and using anti-spam software can also improve security.
4. Use Strong Passwords
You should be extremely careful with passwords. Ideally, any password you use for your online business should combine lower and upper case letters, special symbols, and numbers. This way, you can make it harder for hackers to crack. For improved security, change the passwords regularly. You can also use two-factor authentication. If you have to send passwords or any form of sensitive data via email, make sure you use encrypted emails.
Understanding how you can protect your online business from various security threats can help you succeed. If you do not want to damage your reputation and waste a lot of time and money, you should focus on security. You can enhance the safety of an online business by choosing a secure hosting service and working with a reliable support team. Paying attention to email security and using strong passwords for all business accounts can protect your business from cybercrimes.
