Every single year we spend more and more time building and conducting our small business online making it more and more important to protect your small business online.  Sometimes things are obvious and other times we don’t even know we need to be doing them.

5 Ways To Protect Your Small Business Brand Online:

1. Brand Awareness: Brand identity online is really important and one of the things we can quite easily do and keep on top of ourselves.  Branding isn’t just a logo, colours, and name. Although online, it’s really important to make sure you streamline all of these, exact colour matches, same avatars/profile images, same name, each social media platform should easily be identifiable as your small business. Social media is also a great way to tell stories as a way of engaging with consumers. It enables your brand to stand out from a crowd and reinforces your brand identity.
2. Keep Hackers Out: As a small business, most of my most valuable information is often stored on my computer, even the access to my website and all its associated files.  It’s important to ensure that. When utilizing a computer, always be sure to put security measures, anti-virus software, and backup hard drives in place. Small office security keeps your small business safe against ransomware and all new and existing cyber threats. I was hacked once and it’s such a stressful experience trying to get yourself back online when you have no real tech experience.  As a cybersecurity software leader, Bitdefender is committed to defending small businesses around the globe against cyberattacks, helping to transform and improve digital experiences.
3. Use Strong Passwords: We all do it mostly in my case it’s because I have a terrible memory! Seriously, we really shouldn’t be using passwords like “password,” or “123456”, or the same passwords for multiple sites. A strong password should ideally have 12 or more characters, consisting of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. Every account you have should have a different password.
4. Use An SSL Certificate: A while back we all changed our sites from HTTP to HTTPS by adding a Secure Sockets Layer or an SSL. In simple terms, it’s a bit of code on your web server that provides security for all your online communications. It’s especially important on eCommerce websites. An SSL shows in the toolbar as a padlock and conveys to customers that their information will be kept secure and protected while using the site.
5. Back It Up: You should always be backing up your content whether that be via cloud resources, Dropbox or an external hard drive.  For this website, I use a plugin which automatically backs up to Dropbox. It helps if I make any bad or damaging changes, or if I am hacked or moving hosts. The main reason for backing up data though is to have all your important files at hand if a system crash or hard drive failure occurs or you buy a new device.

Most of these tips are either free or low-cost solutions to protecting your brand online. The consequences on time, resources and money if you don’t protect your brand online though can be huge.  How do you protect your small business online?

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