As a fledgling retail business, starting up can be the most difficult part. No matter what you’re aiming to sell, if you’re planning to utilise a website, there’s plenty that needs to be considered, with website security being at the forefront of your mind. Once you have the nuts and bolts ready to go, there are some things that can help you to provide a secure and safe online business, to protect your customers and yourself. The Internet plays a massive part in day-to-day life nowadays, it makes sense to protect your corner of the market and there are various ways of doing so:

• Buy SSL certificate – SSL encryption is one of the handiest features you could adopt for your website, particularly if you are going to be handling sensitive data, such as addresses, credit card numbers and login details, at any point. Whether you add a SSL certificate to your website to show your customers they can trust you, or you add one to the web-based HR system you are planning to use, it will help keep the hackers at bay and the details safe.
• Encrypt Emails – Protect your emails to avoid them being read by unintended recipients with an encryption protocol such as S/MIME, a public key certificate similar to SSL that ensures sensitive data sent in email form is secure.
• Antivirus Protection – This is essential on your personal workspace as well as if you have a small team of employees who could unintentionally upload a virus to your business network from their phone or tablet.
• Protect your Intellectual Property – Ensure your intangible assets are protected (e.g. homemade crafts, designs and musical work) using copyrights, trademarks or patents.
• Backup Files – Avoid the despair experienced if you lose your work, invoices, orders and accounts – back them up often.

If you have all this in order sooner rather than later, you can concentrate on the fun part – making your site inviting and watching the sales roll in.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.