Now more than ever, the ability to conduct your business online is essential to establishing a place in the market. However, the field of e-commerce is not just reserved for massive trans-national corporations like Amazon and Microsoft – even your small business can benefit from advancements in technology.
If you wish to maximize the effectiveness of your Arizona small business, you must make sure that your tech investments are cost-effective and that you keep your business protected from cyber-attacks. The following are the best tech tips for your small business in 2021.
Invest in Cybersecurity
A cybersecurity system is a way of protecting your small business from malware and hackers. Ransomware groups like Darkside operate by hacking into businesses and encrypting their data to ransom it back at extortionate costs. Whilst they usually target large companies, an attack on your small business could be crippling. Cybersecurity is a must-have if you want to move any or all of your small business online.
There are many different security suites designed to keep your personal computer safe from viruses and hackers, with Bitdefender and Norton 360 Deluxe being some of the most widely used.
But to develop a security arrangement for your entire business, you will want to consult a group of professional IT Services that can help you find a security plan that will suit your small business arrangement.
Streamline Processes with Cloud Services
Making tactical software investments can save you time, money, and space in the long term. Accounting packages like Quickbooks for example, can help you keep an eye on your business’s finances.
A study conducted in the UK revealed that the average self-employed person spends 15 days a year just managing their business’s finances. This time can be spent elsewhere if you incorporate cloud services into your business plan.
Similarly, using programs such as Dropbox allows files to be accessed on multiple computers at any time in any place. Big businesses are taking full advantage of work schemes like this, with Twitter recently announcing all its employees can work from home ‘forever.’ Likewise, this can help your small business work across large distances and shave down on time too.
Use MFA
When you log in to a site, this is called ‘authentication.’ Usually, this requires a username and password, but for hackers these days, that system is easy to penetrate. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security to all your online activity, crucial to a small business owner.
It can do this in several ways, common examples being sending a verification PIN to your smartphone, requiring a fingerprint scan, or using facial recognition software.
With the prevalence of cybersecurity risks out there, you need to take every precaution to ensure your online safety, and multi-factor authentication is an excellent way of making it more difficult for anyone else to get a hold of your business information.
Dive into Digital Marketing
E-commerce is the term used to describe trading over the internet. With so many businesses moving the majority of their stores online, the world wide web has become the largest marketplace on the planet, with access to more customers than a walk-in store ever has the potential to reach.
As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, many small businesses that did not move online struggled to cope financially. However, small businesses that were online witnessed sales increases from their online stores of 110% over the 2020 Christmas holiday period, with a particular surge around Black Friday, according to a study by Adobe Analytics. This is because many people who could not go out to do their Christmas shopping were instead forced to do it online.
Businesses that are able to operate online will find themselves more adaptable to change in 2021 because transactions do not need to be conducted in person, and they have access to a much broader base of consumers.
For these reasons, updating the technology used by your Arizona small business will give you the greatest opportunity to survive and grow in the increasingly online-oriented marketplace. Not only this, but implementing cloud services into the infrastructure of your business will allow you to cut down on wasted costs, time, and effort.
Maintaining your business’s security is essential, as hackers and malware attacks have the potential to be financially crippling. But these risks can be mitigated with the help of cybersecurity programs and using multi-factor authentication for your business accounts.
