What do you imagine when you think of business?
Do you imagine firm handshakes, confident sales, and growing numbers?
That isn’t wrong, but it doesn’t capture the whole picture. Agreement and cooperation requires trust. A good sale requires confidence in the integrity of the deal. Business growth requires the stable foundation of tools, payment processing, record keeping and relationships.
You can create the best product and have the most compelling marketing, but ultimately a deal requires trust. You need to trust your customer and they need to be able to trust you and your product. If a business cannot trust, or is not trusted, then it will struggle.
Trust is the game changer
Security is how we safely establish and preserve trust. We often think about security around emails, computers, and door locks. These are all relevant and important parts of security, but that makes security sound like something you can buy.
Security goes deeper than a product or a technology, the way people behave decides if something is secure or not.
Ultimately, security is a mindset
Locks don’t work if we prop the door open, passwords don’t protect if they’re written on the side of the machine, and email isn’t safe if we don’t learn how to recognize the fake email from the real mail.
This is something that goes all the way to the core of a business with a fundamental question: “How can ensure that I can keep doing good business?”
Asking questions early on can save a lot of trouble
As you build you business, here are a few things you can do to keep security in the picture:
- Include it in the business plan. Consider different scenarios and risks before you start to build, update that part of the plan as the business evolves. Include security strategies can be put into place early to save costs later. Research how similar businesses approach security and how effective those approaches have been.
- Involve security in leadership conversations. When the business grows ask if this changes security. When things in the world change, see how it might affect your security. Things are always evolving.
- Ask the hard security questions early. What is the cost of a breach in your business? How long could your company pause operations if a serious incident occurred? Who can you turn to for help if the worst comes to pass? Even if you don’t have a complete answer right away, trying to answer them can go a long way to preparing for risk.
You may not have complete control, but you can prepare and have an influence. Opportunity and risk are two sides of a balancing act, and we and never know what the future brings. Accepting this can pave the way to focusing on the things you can control.
You don’t have to be and expert on everything all the time, but setting some time aside to do a little diligence can still go a long way to protect your business.