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Small businesses are the entities that run the economy. On average, around 600,000 of these companies are opened each year. Some of them close due to the lack of solid products or sales techniques. Others close due to a poor IT infrastructure. Technology is more important than ever. After the COVID pandemic of 2020, a large percentage of businesses moved online. Yours might be one of them. Therefore, you might need some guidance on how to proceed. Here are a few tech tips that your small business should consider.
Invest In Cybersecurity
Infrastructure security is a high priority these days. Billions of people and companies have been affected by cyber extortionists. It doesn’t matter how small your business is, you must invest in cybersecurity. At the minimum, you need a cyber risk management platform. You can find an excellent organization online that offers these applications. This will help your business to minimize the risk of hacks. Some companies even support these through 24/7 operations so you don’t have to bring in your own security team.
Outsource An IT Department
Even if you have funding available there’s no need for you to bring in an on-site IT staff. The main reason is you probably don’t have the bandwidth to support them. Plus, as a company trying to build, you might not be able to retain the quality talent required to maintain an IT infrastructure. Instead, outsource an IT department. You can do this on an individual service basis for just hardware or software. On the other hand, you can hire a complete team of subject matter experts that ensure everything is up and running.
Run A Risk Management Audit
When you execute a risk management audit you attempt to find the holes in your IT security infrastructure. These can be detected by cyber extortionists and used to break into your system. At the minimum, personally identifiable information (PII) is removed. At the worst, ransomware is applied that basically halts any productivity. The risk management audit compiles a list of these issues and works to find solutions to them. Then, these are implemented and tested to determine their usefulness. The more holes that can be covered the less of a risk you have to this form of attack.
Implement A Virtual Private Network
If you have a mostly remote workforce, then a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, is imperative to your operations. Not having one opens your network infrastructure to a cyber attack. Conversely, if you implement VPN, it’s harder for these malicious observers to see anything. The reason is a VPN shrouds a connection in privacy. Both the IP address and the Domain Name System (DNS) are hidden from the outside. Furthermore, the connection and all data, be it files or videos, is encrypted. As a result, hackers have a harder time retrieving usable information.
Use Apps That Speed Up Processes
A huge problem small business owners have is the inability to focus on sales or create new products. They can’t do this because they spend most of their time on administrative tasks. Rather than using their creativity, they deal with the minutiae of daily operations to keep fires from bursting out. To prevent this, look into applications that speed up your regular processes. For instance, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool can be designed to track products from the point of the order to the completion of shipping. Time tracking software increases the responsibility of workers to maintain proper schedules.
Conclusion
These are only a small example of the tech tips that your small business should consider. In the end, you need to gather your managers with you and run a technology audit. Determine where your gaps are, then look into solutions that increase productivity and decrease malicious activity. Needless to say, don’t go into this with the belief that everything will be fixed in a week. Most likely, it will take some time to implement every tech tip on this list. You need to test out software, run risk management assessments, and interview the IT support teams for your organization. If you plan carefully, like you did when you started your business, you’ll be on track for a powerful technology platform.