Cyber Security Benefits: Accelerating Business Growth and More
Last update: 30 July 2024 at 11:26 am
We live in a digitally interconnected world with rapid technological changes that have resulted in tectonic shifts in the ways that humans and machines interact. Whether you are a small business or a giant enterprise, this trend impacts you and how you do business and the benefits of cyber security are increasing at an exponential rate every day.
There’s no denying that such interaction has come with several of technological benefits to companies thanks to super-fast computing and other spoils. Unfortunately, the world has also encountered many potential threats surrounding cyber security, hacking, malicious cyber attacks, and data breaches.
The ever-growing cybersecurity threats not only cause data loss but also impact the financial section of a business and affect the reputation of impacted companies.
Therefore, it’s critical that businesses make stealthy internet cyber security their number one objective.
Security Systems: A growth enabler
As much as it’s perceived as a mitigation factor against cyber attacks, cyber security has also opened doors as being literally a business growth booster.
Yes, you read it right – cyber security is a business growth enabler!
This means that any business that isn’t focusing on cybersecurity solutions is missing out on the significant opportunities of innovating and growing.
So, what are companies doing to ensure that they’re embracing cyber security with an eye on innovation and growth?
Data Security: Securing Customer Data
Collecting customers’ contact information is likely (and should be) a part of your marketing strategy. Without this step, you may as well throw in the towel.
To grow your business, you’ll likely want to utilize channels like PPC or social media to drive traffic to landing pages you’ve created on your website for the purpose of building your pipeline or email lists. On these pages, you’ll have lead magnets set up which will serve to entice your site visitors to give up their contact info in exchange for something free.
Collecting data with lead magnets
These are things your content team will create like eBooks, white papers, demo videos, free trials, coupon codes, and other giveaways that add value for the reader. While this is a great way for you to build your pipeline and increase lead generation, it also gives you access to customer data like email addresses, phone numbers, bank account details, and other data that your target audience likely wants to keep private.
Most people have a hard time giving away their info, as it requires a certain level of trust. So, if you request more personal information from your target audience in order to download the free benefits of the promotional offer you’re giving away, then you need to take steps to data security.
Empowering Mobile Employees
Things are evolving fast, and companies are following suit! Initially, most of a given company’s cyber security focus would be given to the PCs in an office setting.
However, with the current increased mobility of the workforce due to remote working, focusing only on the security of the PCs in your office is apparently a waste of time as much as it’s a necessity.
Most companies are now looking to increase their levels of productivity as well as geographically expand their workforce. Therefore, their focus is now on empowering the mobile workforce.
There’s no better way of increasing a company’s innovation and growth than ensuring that the remote employees are empowered (and secure). For many businesses, this can be a challenge as they’ll have to properly vet mobile users, deploy digital certificates to users, and then implement the correct mobile security technologies and policies.
While it’s not an easy task to accomplish the process when everything is in place with a company’s mobile infrastructure, it’s a breeze to avert data breaches and security risks while enabling innovation, accelerating growth, and opening up your business to recruit top talent from across the globe.
Protecting Critical Assets
Protecting a business’s critical assets is a no-brainer, especially in the current digital-centric world. In fact, from the past experience of companies that have been targeted, after the incident, most of the businesses are unable to come back to life again, or it may take a long period to rediscover their form and regain their footing.
Ways to protect your assets
There are several means that a business can use to ensure that they protect their critical assets. For instance, they can use multi-factor authentication, SMS 2FA, user and device certificate provision, role-based access control, mobile device management, enterprise, cloud identity management, VPN, single sign-on (SSO), and privileged account management. These can each come into play depending on your circumstance.
Such strong protection does much more than just provide network security for users. In fact, business operations with improved cybersecurity measures have enhanced customer loyalty as well as trust.
Many of a company’s assets are actually assets related to customer’s personal information, which makes them even more critical to protect. That way, the company enhances its reputation in the market which helps to attract new customers. To state the obvious, more customers with a higher level of trust = more business and increased brand authority.
Streamlining Compliance
There’s no denying that it can be an overwhelming process for a company trying to comply with the government as well as data privacy regulations. In fact, for most companies, the process might hinder the growth and expansion of the business as everything focuses on avoiding risks rather than taking them (taking risks can be hugely valuable for businesses in the right situation).
Everything has to be done while keeping a sturdy security posture intact. Moreover, it becomes even harder for a company to keep up with evolving cyber threats as well as protective standards.
Therefore, since technology is on the move, it’s significantly important to streamline the compliance sector to ensure that companies focus on their growth by merely innovating new offerings as well as extending their business reach.
Successful companies are those that conduct risk analysis, deploy the correct security technology, come up with policies and procedures, deploy a cloud, and then test the solutions to make sure that they are compliant.
Risk is great, but the best risk is calculated risk. And you should never take on risk when it comes to things like cyber security.
Embracing Cloud
Most organizations are shifting to the cloud to ensure that they support the business as well as mobile workers. It’s arguably the best modern means of enabling stronger as well as seamless collaboration.
And collaboration is key in today’s interconnected business world. Whether collaborating with your team on a project, tracking business results through your CRM, or sharing sensitive files with a partner organization, business is shifting more and more to operations in the Cloud. If you aren’t set up to operate securely in the cloud, you’re putting your business behind.
Value of hosted cloud environments
Unlike the on-premises solutions available, Hosted cloud environments offer great benefits for employee collaboration and easy access to highly sensitive data from almost anywhere. This greater accessibility can help your company to innovate and grow.
Furthermore, modernizing the IT infrastructure and migrating into the cloud comes with savings; given that a company doesn’t have to maintain or even continually modernize the IT sector, that’s usually the case for the on-premises environment.
If you avoid the overhead of taking on all of these operations in-house, you can realize some serious savings to pile on to the huge benefits available to you.
The Inter-link
In conclusion, it’s evident that cyber security and the growth of a business are interlinked.
However, it’s unfortunate that most companies have yet to uncover the correlation.
But sooner than later, the need to see cyber security from another angle will become clearer. For now, those companies that have cyber security as a priority are reaping their benefits as an enabler for innovation and growth.
If your company doesn’t fall into the category of “ahead of the game” when it comes to cyber security, then you’re really falling behind. The digital world changes too fast to sit idly by and fail to consider the implications of not being on top of the things we’ve discussed today in this article.
So, sit down with your leadership team and talk through the benefits as well as the logistics of implementing enhanced cyber security procedures within your organization. Whether you’re looking at your website, social media, your CRM, or any other customer touchpoint or place you save more data, make sure you do it safely.
Don’t let cyber security slip off your plate because it isn’t public-facing and not as exciting as things like video marketing, speaking engagements, and other more public things you do to grow your business. Trust me, if you do cyber security the wrong way, it will become public-facing, and you don’t want that.
Web development agencies in London are crucial in ensuring your digital presence is both secure and effective. So, get your cyber security in order to ensure your business continues to grow and doesn’t fall victim to a PR nightmare. Do it today before you are digital light years behind the competition.