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5 Ways to protect your business

5 Ways to protect your business

People invest a lot of time into building their business, whether this is a small business that is operated from home or a global empire, yet unlike big business owners that have measures in place to protect their interests, many small business owners and freelancers in particular fail to provide themselves with the protection they deserve.

Hindsight can be a painful lesson, yet it’s only usually in hindsight that people wish they took out extra precautions such as insurance against a particular risk – now that it’s too late.

This article looks at five ways you should be protecting your business no matter how big or small.

1 – Protect your data

The majority of crime affecting business today is remote, and cyber-based in its nature, meaning antivirus software such as that described on Why The Lucky Stiff is more important today, than ever before.

In addition, you want to ensure you are running regular back-ups, both to the cloud and external devices such as USBs and external hard drives.  The challenge with USBs, however, is that they are surprisingly easy to break, particularly if you carry them around in your pocket, and this can be devastating should your only back-up be on a USB that no longer works, either due to hardware issues or the data being corrupted.

Again, data corruption is a significant threat to most small business owners, as just think of how long it has taken you to build certain assets, and how much time and effort would be lost should these digital assets become compromised.

2 – Be compliant

It’s an obvious point that you want to keep in line with pertinent laws, and keep up with your taxes, but some business owners don’t always get the importance of this – until they get a seriously worded demand to pay what is owed.

It pays to work with a professional, such as an account and lawyer in order to ensure your compliance with key regulations and business requirements.  

3 – Get good insurance

A decent business insurance can protect you against most storms, as whilst you can still suffer loss with an insurance policy in place – it provides a safety net to at least make you whole, should the worst happen.

One of the most overlooked types of business insurance, however, is one that protects you from loss of earnings due to ill health.  This can be a particularly necessary safety net should you be providing for your family as the sole earner.

4 – An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

As a business owner, you tend to be vicariously liable for the actions of your employees, meaning even if someone else breaks the law or is negligent then you, as the employer, will be responsible for the employees actions.  For this reason, you will want to prevent such incidents happening by providing adequate training, and also, ensuring you aren’t acting negligently yourself.

5 – Protect your tech

Most small business owners are reliant on a plethora of mobile gadgets from iPhones and iPads to laptops… all of which are exposed to many risks in the course of daily life, and often taken for granted in terms of the reliance of we have on the performance of these gadgets.

Photo by Daniel Corneschi 


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