How secure is your business? Part of your financial spring cleaning is making sure that the proverbial doors are locked and alarm systems are in place. Now is the time to do the security work you’ve been putting off to ensure your business remains protected.
These tasks are best undertaken with the help of your IT team and the roles that gatekeep business purchasing. You’ll need a unified effort to check your security facade for cracks.
1. Fraud audit
42% of private companies have experienced fraud, for a $164,000 median loss per company – ACFE
Data monitoring
How do you monitor your data for fraud? If someone were to illegally access your accounts how long would it take you to catch it? Don’t get embarrassed—get serious.
- Check expense reports and credit card statements thoroughly and regularly
- Create a monitoring system for corporate card access so you know who has access to company funds (or switch to Divvy and give everyone controlled corporate cards)
- Remove access to accounts (financial, software, etc.) from those who no longer use or need it
- Use your annual free credit report to check suspicious activity for your business credit
Surprise audit
Grab some snacks and settle in for some auditing. An audit is the best way to identify sneaky incidents of fraud. It’s important to have technological controls, but human instinct is key. Look over expense reports, especially those lacking receipts or with “homemade” receipts.
Compare spending between employees in similar roles to identify individuals who may be overspending (if Jim in sales has 3x the spending of Bob in sales… that’s suspicious) as well as year-over-year spending (one of your departments doubled their spend from last year). Set up surprise audits on a schedule for the foreseeable future so you can maintain visibility and control of your security.
2. Backup data and update your software
Hiscox reported that small businesses (sized 50-250 employees) lost $184k in 2019 to cyberattacks.
Employees
Protecting your business will require some employee buy-in. Create a simple security checklist and communicate clearly with employees about the benefits and urgency of shoring up digital security. Here’s what every employee should do:
- Push updates for all software and turn on automatic updates
- Change passwords to be longer “passphrases”
- Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all platforms
IT
Your IT team (or resident security expert) should take the lead on protecting the company’s digital assets and accounts. They should ensure that every software product you use relies on data encryption and security testing (switch if they don’t!). In addition, it’s critical that you maintain PCI compliance if your business processes credit card payments—to protect both you and your customers.
3. Manage your subscriptions
We all use and love software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscriptions. From Asana to Zoom you need software tools to facilitate your business operations. But they can quickly become cluttered, invisible, and out of control. Someone signed up for an analytics software, stopped using it, and they’ve hiked up the price on you. Or you’re paying for 20 extra licenses for design software that only 3 people use.
Let’s clean that up to protect your financial accounts and even save you some cash.
- Take inventory of all subscriptions you use (from SaaS subscriptions to publications), including who uses them, how much they cost, and how they’re being paid for.
- Determine which subscriptions are needed, who needs access, and how much you should be paying.
- Cancel or renegotiate underused or expensive subscriptions.
- Set up your subscriptions with virtual cards so they can never auto-renew or overcharge you.
- Consider a subscription management service like Chargebee or Blissfully.
Safe and sound
Keeping your business secure and sharp can make a huge difference, both in your productivity and your revenue. These are all the tasks you’ve been putting off, but batching them in a day or two can leave you primed for excellent work (and you won’t have to deal with it for a long, long time). Lock it down so you can ramp it up.
Have you tried virtual cards for subscription management and increased financial security? Divvy offers virtual cards to protect your main account details, with controls to stop overcharging. Get started now.
