Businesses face a constant tug-of-war. How do you keep your customers coming back while also rigorously protecting the data they share with you? You know it to be true that if you want sustainable success, you’ll need to do both. It's a delicate balance between steps to optimize data protection while also ensuring that it doesn’t hinder your ability to turn a profit. Today, we’re going to take a look at how you can lay down the law while also rolling out the red carpet for your customers.
Protecting your digital assets has to be pretty high up on your list of priorities if you run a business. Fortunately, it doesn’t always have to be in everyone’s face. You can deploy invisible infrastructure that protects your customers and your business. You don’t need draconian processes to maintain security, you need to deploy tools that are responsible and proactive.
So how do you do this? Well, it’s not just one thing, to be sure. Let’s go through some of the things you can do to improve your organizational cybersecurity, behind the scenes, so to speak.
Get Your People In Line
Let’s start with the biggest problem first. People will always be the biggest threat to your business’ security so you should absolutely train your people on how to build, save, and use robust passwords. This includes all the favorites: longer passwords are better; the use of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols to maximize complexity; passwords should never be reused; and, the use of multi-factor authentication to provide another level of security.
You should also train them on the best practices of thwarting phishing scams and other cyberattacks. The better equipped your staff is at identifying and avoiding potential scams and hacks, the more secure your whole business will be. If your people know how to both engage your customers while doing the things that need to be done to protect your business on the back-end, you’ll be in a great position—as many of the problems that businesses encounter in this area are due to employee error.
Know Your Place
You should also know what you have to do. Most businesses are subject to some type of regulation. Failing to meet these mandates can be a real problem. Not only can they result in regulatory fines, they can actually tie your business’ ability to function up in red tape. You need to know what mandates you need to be in compliance with and then determine how to stay in compliance with them as your business grows and changes. You may be surprised to find out that you don’t meet the requirements of all the compliance standards and doing what you can to get up to speed with them will help your business stay out of regulatory hot water.
One of the best ways to ensure that you do know what you need to do to maintain compliance is to regularly review your technology and place it in the market. Most good business leaders know what they want to accomplish, but the ones that do know exactly where their business stands, and how it needs to change to continue improvement, are in a better position to do so. Conducting frequent security and regulatory audits can go a long way toward helping you understand your business and how to best serve your customers.
Hide Your Fears
You know there are a constantly-increasing number of cyberthreats out there. Your customers may or may not. They just want what they want without a whole lot of effort, and if they have problems, they want to know that they will be taken seriously and that their problem will be remedied. You, on the other hand, need to understand how to engage them to even consider your business, sell them on making a purchase, support their purchase, and do it all without putting them at risk.
This is a scary proposition.
They don’t need to know just how scary it is for you. When we talk about rolling out the red carpet, we are usually talking about something that is welcoming and makes a person feel like a guest of honor. Businesses that operate in this digital era should do what they can to make their customers feel special without making them aware just how aware you are. Meaning that while they want you to know they are trusting you with their information, they don’t need you to tell them how it works. A common saying is, “I don’t want to know how the sausage is made.” That’s exactly how most customers feel about your business’ cybersecurity. Keep security away from the view of your customers as much as possible and they will assume you have it covered.
The fact is that the most successful businesses don't choose between engaging customers and protecting their data. They master the art of doing both. At COMPANYNAME, we can help you outfit your business with the resources and offer the expertise to design it in a way where you can have the best of both worlds. For more information about how we can help you both lay down the law and roll out the red carpet, give us a call today at PHONENUMBER.