Your home business might be a small part-time venture, or it might be your full-time employment. However much of your time it takes up, there’s an aspect of your business that you’ll want to make sure is watertight — how secure it is. We’re living in an age where there’s a data trail for everything you do, and if it falls into the wrong hands, it won’t be difficult for them to deliberately misuse and compromise the financial health of your company. Below, we take a look at four ways you can reduce the chances of any incidents happening.

Secure Your Laptop

While you’ll want to take steps to keep your digital data secure, keep in mind that while most things are digitally based, you do also have a real laptop there that contains all the information too. If you keep yourself logged into to all your business related websites, then it’ll be incredibly easy for someone who gets their hands on your laptop to cause problems for you, your company, and your customers. Keep things secure by first choosing a strong password that cannot be guessed, and also keeping your laptop under lock and key when it’s not being used.

Dealing With Customers

If you’re a home based business, then it’s likely that you rarely, if ever, see a customer face to face. So how can you be so sure that the person making an order is who they say they are? If it turns out you’ve sent out an item and then their payment has to be reversed to the actual cardholder, then your company will be out of pocket. There are ways to protect against this type of thing happening, however. Jumio is trusted by leading brands and financial services, and can help you to verify the identity of your customers even when they’re not sitting right in front of you. You can’t take any chances that the person on the other end of the email/phone is who they say they are!

Hiring Staff

There’ll come the point when you need to bring other people on board to help run your business. This might involve hiring someone remotely, or bringing someone into your home based business. Whatever form it takes, it’s important that you treat the process as a potential security threat, because that’s what it is. While you’ll hope that your team member won’t double cross you (though it does happen, so vet your applicant before hiring them), they may inadvertently cause you trouble by being lax with security measures. Make sure they’re fully briefed about the correct way to handle and store data.

When Travelling for Business

You know things are going well for your business when you’re able to take business trips. Be aware, however, that travelling does pose extra security risks. Always keep your laptop and paper files within sight, and always, always refrain from joining open wifi networks — once you’re connected, it’s incredibly easy for hackers to gain access to your data.